| Are Nano-Particles the New Asbestos? |
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Katharine Van Tassell, B.S.N., M.P.H., J.D. – Visiting Professor of Law |
Friday February 21, 2020
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Dampeer Room
Kelvin Smith Library*
Case Western Reserve University
Dear Colleagues:
Nanotechnology involves design, production, and use of materials, structures, devices or systems in the nanoscale range – so between 1 and 100 billionths of a meter in scale. This technology is viewed as having many positive applications in medicine, such as to counter the effects of viruses, mutated genes and misfolded proteins of similar scale. For example, nanoparticles could aid the transport of biologic or thereapeutic agents through biologic barriers, or mediate molecular interactions.
If nanoparticles can deliver good things to intended places, however, they might also deliver not-so-good things to unintended places.
The use of nanotechnology in consumer products, including food, dietary supplements, cosmetics, and sunscreens is skyrocketing. For example, silver nanoparticles may be in clothing for an anti-microbial effect, and titanium dioxide or zinc oxide nanoparticles in sunscreens. At the same time, there is growing concern about health risks associated with this use, including an asbestos-like effect. Professor Van Tassel, a leading authority on food and drug law, will broadly discuss the public health, regulatory, legal and ethical issues raised by the use of nanotech ingredients in consumer products, and how innovative technologies used in consumer products should be regulated to protect public health while encouraging innovation.
Join us for a discussion of new public health issues at the intersection of economics, politics, and science.
All best regards,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
Katharine Van Tassel is a Visiting Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. Previously, she served as Dean and Professor of Law at San Francisco Law School. She has served as the Associate Dean of Academics and Professor of Law at Concordia University School of Law and the founding Director of Health Law Programs and Professor of Law at Creighton University School of Law. Professor Van Tassel’s co-authored book, Food and Drug Administration, has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and by numerous federal and state courts, her research on hospital peer review has been cited by judges on the supreme courts of New Mexico and Nevada on issues of first impression, and she has testified as an expert witness at hearings held by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in Washington, D.C. She is the Co-Chair of the Food & Drug Law Committee of the Administrative Law Section of the American Bar Association and has served on the executive boards of the Law, Medicine, and Healthcare Section, the Law and Mental Disability Section, and the BioLaw Section of the American Association of Law Schools. Professor Van Tassel has an M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health, is completing an M.S. in Food Safety from Johns Hopkins University, and has a B.S.N. and J.D. from Case Western Reserve University.
Where We Meet
The Friday Public Affairs Lunch convenes each Friday when classes are in session, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Our programs are open to all and no registration is required. We usually meet in the Dampeer Room of Kelvin Smith Library.
* Kelvin Smith Library requires all entrants to show identification when entering the building, unless they have a university i.d. that they can magnetically scan. We are sorry if that seems like a hassle, but it has been Library policy for a while in response to security concerns. Please do not complain to the library staff at the entrance, who are just doing their jobs.
Parking Possibilities
The most convenient parking is the lot underneath Severance Hall. We regret that it is not free. From that lot there is an elevator up to street level (labeled as for the Thwing Center); it is less than 50 yards from that exit to the library entrance. You can get from the Severance garage to the library without going outside. Near the entry gates – just to the right if you were driving out – there is a door into a corridor. Walk down the corridor and there will be another door. Beyond that door you’ll find the entrance to an elevator which goes up to an entrance right inside the doors to Kelvin Smith Library.
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
February 28: China’s Belt and Road Initiative and China’s Record in Foreign Development. With Julia C. Strauss, Ph.D., Professor of Chinese Politics, University of London School of Oriental and African Studies.
March 6: The Racial Geography of Cleveland Heights. With Jessica A. Kelley, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology.
March 13: Spring Break
March 20: Taking Away the Car Keys (from seniors). With Weidi Qin, MSW, MPH, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.
March 27: China’s Tibet Dilemma at a Crossroads. With Melvyn C. Goldstein, Ph.D., John Reynolds Harkness Professor in Anthropology and Co-Director, Center for Research on Tibet.
April 3: Creating Army Officers for the 21st Century. With Lt. Col. Brian Ferguson, Professor of Military Science, John Carroll University.
April 10: What’s the Beef? The Controversy Over Health Effects of Red Meat. With Hope Barkoukis, Ph.D., Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professor in Wellness and Preventive Care and Chair, Department of Nutrition.
April 17: Targeted Assassinations, and Other Red or Not-So-Red Lines. With Shannon French, Ph.D., Inamori Professor of Ethics and Director, Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence.
April 24: Regulating Content of Online Platforms. With Raymond Ku, J.D., Professor and Laura B. Chisholm Distinguished Research Scholar, CWRU School of Law. |
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February 16, 2020
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Upcoming Events
Building the Post-1949 State in China and Taiwan
A Global Currents Discussion with Julia Strauss, Ph.D., Professor of Chinese Politics, SOAS, University of London, Thursday February 27, 2020, 4:00 p.m., Tinkham Veale University Center, Room 134, 11038 Bellflower Rd., Cleveland, OH 44106. This program is made possible by the generosity of Ms. Eloise Briskin. Refreshments will be provided.
Building a new state is hard. A governing apparatus must be built, a populace convinced (not always willingly!) and a sense of what the state is and how it should act must make it intelligible to both its agents and citizens or subjects. How a state is built shapes its future – and is shaped by the past. Professor Strauss shows how somewhat similar challenges and inherited understandings led to both commonalities and differences in how authority was consolidated on both sides of the Straits. That has lessons for understanding both China and state-building.
Julia C. Strauss joined the faculty of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London in 1994, and currently serves as Professor of Chinese Politics. From 2002 – 2011 she also served as editor of The China Quarterly. Professor Strauss earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1992 and has published widely on 20th century state building and institutional development in China and Taiwan. This includes her new book, State Formation in China and Taiwan: Bureaucracy, Campaign and Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2019) as well as her previous Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927-1940 (Oxford University Press, 1998). She co-edited, with Donal B. Cruise O’Brien, Staging Politics: Power and Performance in Asia and Africa (I.B. Tauris, 2007). As part of her work with The China Quarterly, Professor Strauss also co-edited special volumes on China and Africa, China and Latin America, Gender in contemporary China, The History of the People’s Republic, and Culture in the Contemporary PRC.
Prison Abolition and a Mule
A discussion with Paul Butler, J.D., Albert Brick Professor in Law at Georgetown University Law Center and legal analyst on MSNBC, Wednesday March 18, 2020, 4:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m., Moot Courtroom (A59), CWRU School of Law, 11075 East Blvd, Cleveland, OH 44106.
Incarceration is a relatively recent development in the history of punishment, with the first modern prison constructed in Philadelphia in the early 1800s. The American penitentiary was intended as a reform, making the institution of punishment more humane and rehabilitative. Because the United States now locks up more people than almost any country in the history of the world, this nation is perhaps the best laboratory to assess the success of the experiment. By virtually any measure, prisons have not worked. They are sites of cruelty, dehumanization, and violence, as well as subordination by race, class, and gender. Prisons traumatize virtually all who come into contact with them. Abolition of prison could be the ultimate reform. The lecture will suggest what would replace prisons, how people who cause harm could be dealt with in the absence of incarceration, and why abolition would make everyone safer and our society more just.
Professor Butler is one of the nation’s most frequently consulted scholars on issues of race and criminal justice. His work has been profiled on 60 Minutes, Nightline, and The ABC, CBS and NBC Evening News. He lectures regularly for the American Bar Association and the NAACP, and at colleges, law schools, and community organizations throughout the United States. Professor Butler’s scholarship has been published in many leading scholarly journals, including the Georgetown Law Journal, Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review and the UCLA Law Review. He was elected to the American Law Institute in 2003. Professor Butler is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School.
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