Women, Medical Care, and Mass Tort Litigation
21 Pages Posted: 19 Nov 2011
Date Written: 1992
Abstract
In this Essay, I focus attention on and raise some questions about the treatment of women by three power centers: the corporate businesses that provide medical products to women, the regulatory governmental structures that exist to protect consumers from hazardous drugs and medical devices, and the adjudicatory legal system that exists to apply legislative and common law norms to redress the grievances of people injured by drugs and medical devices.
The Essay notes the striking amount of harm that is done to women by the businesses that provide medical products to women, and asks how conditions might be changed to prevent or deter those wrongs and to better redress the injuries that occur nonetheless. It also explores whether the legal system – including the regulatory system – is significantly different from the corporate culture that permits so many injuries to women, or whether the legal system is similarly infected by cultural influences that render unequal the protection that women are afforded by regulatory agencies and by the courts.
Keywords: Gender, Torts, Medical Care, Courts, Injury, Women, Medicine, Drugs, Legislation
JEL Classification: K13, K32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation