Creating Children with Disabilities

The University of California, Hastings College of the Law presents

Creating Children with Disabilities:
Commentaries on Parental Tort Liability for Preimplantation Genetic Interventions
January 22, 2009

UC Hastings College of the Law
Alumni Reception Center
200 McAllister Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

As technology and science continue to raise issues at a pace rapidly out-stripping that of the law, scholars must look for those emerging issues with which we will soon be forced to struggle as scientific advances become realities. 

Please join the Hastings Law Journal on January 22, 2009, at UC Hastings as we host a panel to discuss the possibility of, justifications for, and complications with the imposition of tort liability for parents who choose to make preimplantation alterations to pre-embryos.  

The panel will provide a variety of opinions and approaches to dealing with this emerging subject.  Professor Kristen Smolensky’s article, forthcoming in the Hastings Law Journal, sparked this discussion, and she will be here to share her thoughts on the imposition of such liability.  Joining her on the panel and discussing issues of pre-embryo identity, under and over inclusion, and determination of harm, will be the authors of responses (also forthcoming) to her article: Professors Jamie King (Hastings), I. Glenn Cohen (Harvard), and Alicia Ouellette (Albany).  And, we are honored also to be joined by Hastings Professor Radhika Rao, who will add her expertise to the panel.

Topics will likely include:

• Rationale for imposition of parental liability under tort law
• Theoretical problems with justifications for liability
• Practical problems with assessing and implementing liability
• Feasibility of tort liability
• Assessment of harm and disability
• Privacy rights and governmental intrusion
• State of the sciences Involved
• Moral issues raised by the technology now and for the future.

A listing of panelists’ biographies can be accessed by link here: Speakers’ Biographies. 

For a flyer of the event, click here: Panel Flyer.