Habitual Criminal Statutes: Shield or Sword

Defamation lawsuits: academic sword or shield?

Scientists and academics are used to defending their theories, methods, and results in the classroom, at conferences, and in peer-reviewed publications. But Pieter Cohen, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, learned that he had to defend his research in a defamation suit while reading a supplement industry trade publication (Robins, 2017). Cohen is known as a “dogged detective” for...

FIST, a sword and shield fusokine for cancer immunotherapy

To antagonize tumor-derived TGFβ contemporaneously to anticancer immunotherapy, we genetically engineered a fusion protein coupling IL-2 and the ectodomain of TGFβ receptor II (Fusion of Interleukin-2 and Soluble TGFβ receptor - a.k.a. FIST). FIST possesses intriguing gain-of-function properties and induces potent activation of IL2-receptor expressing cells and inhibits tumor-derived angiogenes...

HIV is a virus, not a crime: ten reasons against criminal statutes and criminal prosecutions

The widespread phenomenon of enacting HIV-specific laws to criminally punish transmission of, exposure to, or non-disclosure of HIV, is counter-active to good public health conceptions and repugnant to elementary human rights principles. The authors provide ten reasons why criminal laws and criminal prosecutions are bad strategy in the epidemic.

Undead Laws: The Use of Historically Unenforced Criminal Statutes in Non-Criminal Litigation

Sunshine or Shield?

How does the use of a secret vote affect the likelihood that legislators will punish their peers? Two contending arguments exist in the literature: some argue that secret voting may be prejudicial, while others argue that it may help accountability. We address this controversy by analyzing the case of the Brazilian Congress, which uses a sequential combination of open and secret voting procedur...