The field of global health law has evolved over the past decade to describe new legal and policy instruments that apply to a changing set of public health threats, non-state actors, and regulatory norms that structure the global response to public health challenges. This special issue—bringing together the O’Neill Institute for National & Global Health Law and the Global Health Law Consortium—examines the expansive evolution of the field of global health law and its continuing development to face new health threats.

Advanced biopreservation technologies using subzero approaches such as supercooling, partial freezing, and vitrification with reanimating techniques including nanoparticle infusion and laser rewarming are rapidly emerging as technologies with potential to radically disrupt biomedicine, research, aquaculture, and conservation. These technologies could pause biological time and facilitate large-scale banking of biomedical products including organs, tissues, and cell therapies.

Research on advanced biopreservation — technologies that include, for example, partial freezing, supercooling, and vitrification with nanoparticle infusion and laser rewarming — is proceeding at a rapid pace, potentially affecting many areas of medicine and the life sciences, food, agriculture, and environmental conservation. Given the breadth and depth of its medical, scientific, and corresponding social impacts, advanced biopreservation is poised to emerge as a disruptive technology with real benefits, but also ethical challenges and risks. Early engagement with potentially affected groups (...) can help navigate possible societal barriers to adoption of this new technology and help ensure that emerging capabilities align with the needs, desires, and expectations of a broad range of interested parties. (shrink)

This article argues that beneath the veneer of legitimacy in the organ, tissue, and body part transplantation systems exists a horrifying history of human commodification whose vestiges surprisingly linger in contemporary supply and allocation systems. This history, as the Article demonstrates, dates back to the colonial period in the United States, where “grave robbing” became an important feature in the advancement of medicine. This legacy lives on.

It has been ten years since the publication of Professor Larry Gostin’s pathbreaking contribution to law, medicine, and public health, Global Health Law (Harvard University Press, 2014). As Professor Sofia Gruskin’s review in The Lancet noted, the book “brings attention to critical aspects of law that anyone interested in global health needs to be concerned about…” This sentiment was echoed throughout the academy, civil society, among non-governmental organizations, legislative bodies, and even courts.Professor Gostin’s legacy fits among those who harnessed their (...) wisdom, expertise, and voices for the betterment of others and who recognized that chief among the worst harms for any people to endure is the denial of healthcare. This year, one decade after the publication of this of Global Health Law and numerous articles, commentaries, and books, it is clear that Professor Lawrence O. Gostin refuses to be silent on matters that concern the health of the most vulnerable in our world. Our planet is better for his very presence and commitment to what is just, kind, and compassionate. (shrink)