Faculty of Law

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://hdl.handle.net/1807/75711

Established in 1887, the Faculty of Law is one of the oldest professional faculties at the University of Toronto, with a long and illustrious history.

Today, it is one of the world's great law schools, a dynamic academic and social community with more than 50 full-time faculty members and 15-25 distinguished short-term visiting professors from the world's leading law schools, as well as 600 undergraduate and graduate students.

This collection showcases some of the research and scholarly work by its faculty members.

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

The Challenges of Regulating the Use of Genetic Information
(ISUMA, 2001) Austin, Lisa; Lemmens, Trudo
The Challenges of Regulating the Use of Genetic Information
(ISUMA, 2001) Austin, Lisa; Lemmens, Trudo
Genetic information shares many characteristics with other types of health information. Therefore, in dealing with the emerging concerns regarding genetic information, the first question policy makers need to address is the way in which genetic information is unlike other health information, posing problems that require a unique regulatory response. The combination of the following three elements constitutes the primary reason why we have to develop appropriate regulatory measures or adapt existing ones to deal specifically with the challenges of genetic information: the volume of information that can be extracted from one sample; the speed of testing; and its link with computer technology, These features do not raise new concerns so much as augment traditional concerns regarding the uses of health information, But even if these concerns are not in themselves new, the new contexts in which they are raised may require different types of responses, or additional responses, than those pertaining to more traditional health information.
The End of Individual Control Over Health Information: Governing Biobanks and Promoting Fair Information Practices
(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Lemmens, Trudo; Austin, Lisa
Until recently, rules about protection of health information and the protection of human research subjects largely existed in different universes. In the last decade, we can see a growing awareness of privacy concerns and informational risks in the context of health research. This can be associated with the overall growth of research involving health and other personal data, but also with the increase in genetic research, which raises specific informational risks. Research ethics guidelines and regulations have included more detailed provisions on privacy protection. But they have largely continued to emphasize the importance of informed consent as the main protective mechanism in the context of sharing of health information. At the same time, new health information privacy legislation has in some jurisdictions tried to address the growing informational risks associated with health research. Some statutes have done so by, among other things, incorporating the traditional research ethics mechanism of independent review by Research Ethics Committees or Boards in privacy legislation. In line with a well-established tradition in privacy legislation, these statutes are modeled upon Fair Information Practices but nonetheless allocate a specific role to such Committees in dealing with the issue of consent in the context of research. In this chapter, we make two connected arguments. First, we show how a variety of new developments make it increasingly hard to maintain that we can confidently assure the confidentiality of genetic information and detailed health information in the context of research. These developments include advances in genetic technology -- particularly in the context of personalized genome scanning, the growth of health data sharing websites, the increasing regulatory requirements to publicize research data, and the development of large biobanks. Second, we critically analyze how fair information practices are currently already integrated in some privacy legislation in connection with health research. While we support the use of the concept of fair information practices in the context of research, particularly also because of the increased inability to protect privacy on the basis of informed consent, our analysis suggests that research ethics review has been introduced within some of the privacy statutes without appropriate recognition of the structural weaknesses of the current regulatory regime surrounding research.
Pluralism, Context, and the Internal life of Property: A Response to Hanoch Dagan
(University of Toronto Law Journal, 2013) Austin, Lisa
Privacy and Private Law: The Dilemma of Justification
(McGIll Law Journal, 2010) Austin, Lisa

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Browsing Faculty of Law by Author "Austin, Lisa"