Thursday, January 5, 2017

Biolawpalooza


Courtesy of Hank Greely:

Law and the Biosciences Conference Announcement:
The Bio Lawlapalooza!

Advances in the biological sciences from such fields as genetics, neuroscience, reproductive biology, and ecology are increasingly challenging society and the laws that attempt to order, regulate, and protect it.  These advances are crystalizing a new area of work: Law and the Biosciences.  We take a very broad view of Law and the Biosciences and see it encompassing the intersections of both fields. It ranges from CRISPR’d babies and head transplants to patent law in the biosciences with intermediate stops at FDA, health plan coverage decisions, torts, property, and more.  It also includes ways in which biology and its models and approaches may help us understand better that living and evolving organism that is “the law.”

The four of us, in conjunction with the open access, Oxford University Press published Journal of Lawand the Biosciences, and the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences, will host the first annual Bio Lawlapalooza Conference at Stanford Law School on Thursday afternoon and all day Friday, April 20 and 21.  We hope this will provide a forum for people interested in Law and the Biosciences to gather, talk, and share insights, following the precedent of Patent Con, among other conferences.  Registration is free but participants will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation expenses; much meals will be included.

We welcome scholars who are interested in presenting at the conference as well as those who just want to attend, listen, talk, and schmooze. But we encourage all scholars interested in Law and the Biosciences to apply to present at the Conference.  Titles and abstracts of proposed presentations are due on January 30, 2017; the organizers will make decisions about presentations by February 10.  The peer-reviewed Journal of Law and the Biosciences will welcome submissions coming out of the conference.

Please contact Hank at hgreely@stanford.edu with any questions. We hope to see you all at Stanford in late April 2017!