Health
Law
Technology
& Me
A diary that rejects the separation of research from researcher
where you can find information about my legal research at the intersection of health, law and technology
&
reflections on my journey from a small commercial fishing community on the bayou southeast of New Orleans to legal academia in the Netherlands.
Working with Surgeons in the CLASSICA project
When I was around 11 years old, my father suffered severe burn injuries after an explosion in the engine room of his commercial fishing boat, the Marty Boy. I have a vivid memory of sitting in the waiting room watching my mother in her cocktail waitress uniform speaking to the surgeon. I scanned their faces desperately searching for information.
Now, I often work with surgeons on research that aims to use AI-driven technology to improve patient outcomes. Together, we search for information and exchange expertise..
Podcast discussing science and aims of the CLASSICA project and liability implications with Prof. Ronan Cahill (Director of the Centre for Precision Surgery, UCD and the Digital Surgery Unit, MMUH) and Prof. Sara Gerke, Assistant Professor of Law at PSU)
Sometimes new technology helps us do new & groundbreaking things in healthcare, but sometimes . . .
The thing about growing up in a commercial fishing family in the US is that health insurance and access to healthcare are not the norm.
At the bottom of my grandparents' bookshelf stood the full collection of The Doctors Book of Home Remedies. I loved perusing these books as a kid. They tackled everything from arthritis, to kidney stones, to nose bleeds, to wrinkles in an organized an easily-understandable way. But, they weren't just there for curiosity's sake. They served as an invaluable source of health information for the family in the absence of access to healthcare.
. . . new technologies help us do the same old things.
Generative AI has unleashed an new way to obtain health information. Large language models, like ChatGPT, stand ready to answer any number of health and medical questions.
There is no doubt that there is value in access to easy-to-understand health information, especially for people who generally lack access to healthcare, either because of socio-economic or geographical constraints. But there are risks to relying on health information from large language models.
Before becoming an academic researcher, I practiced law for over a decade. Now, in my research, I look for functional solutions to legal challenges.
I think growing up surrounded by the craftsman, hands-on, maker approach to expertise in the commercial fishing community really stuck with me. My grandfather could build boats and sew trawl nets, but he also knew how to captain boats and use trawls to catch shrimp.
I come as a bit of an outsider to legal academia. But, I've spent time as a litigator working with evidence, and experts, and applying the legal frameworks I hope to influence. I know what it feels like to ask a jury to find in my favor. And I know how to harness the power of being underestimated. They didn't call me the "Mindigator" for nothin'.
On Technology and Connection in Unlikely Spaces:
Sittin' on the dock of the bayou . . . with a computer
My mom's father owned a fishing dock in Ycloskey, Louisiana. He always loved new gadgets and was relatively tech-positive for his generation. He bought me my first computer, an IBM desktop. My first paid job was as a bookkeeper for his dock. During the school year, he would drop off the daily "trip tickets" to me on his way home from work, and I kept track of the dock's accounts receivable in QuickBooks.
In the Summer, I went down to the dock and handled the paperwork on site as the shrimp boats came home. I filled out the trip tickets on triplicate paper and wrote (and signed!) checks to fisherman, whose names were inextricably linked to the names of their boats . . . Mr. Lester (on the Capt. Swampy), David Casanova (on the Capt. Budweiser), and my dad (on the Marty Boy).
The summer before I left for college, my grandfather handed me a brochure from some mail order office supply company. He told me to pick out a laptop computer for college. Weeks later, the laptop arrived at the dock and we both stared at it wide eyed and full of excitement as it buzzed to life. Then, the next boat came in. And he went back to weighing and counting shrimp as they rolled up the conveyer belt, and I prepared the trip ticket with a large and utterly indestructible calculator that smelled more than mildly like fresh shrimp.
". . . the laptop arrived at the dock and we both stared at it wide eyed and full of excitement as it buzzed to life. Then, the next boat came in."
Cultural roots for comparativist thinking
Growing up, I was immersed in the culture of my descendants from the Canary Islands. "We are Isleños," my paw paw said. On both sides; Deogracias and Nunez alike, never mind that according to my great Aunt Pheenie (for Josephine), the Nunezes and the Deograciases had familial ties back in the islands.
At some point, I was crowned queen of the annual Isleños festival. I won the title in a random lottery among my friends with last names like Campo and Melerine, whose fathers, like mine, were also commercial fisherman. When I left my bayou-side primary school for high school just miles "up da road," I realized that the "down 'na road" Isleños traditions were different, unique. This marked the early beginnings of my comparativist thinking.
Now, in my comparative research, I'm curious about other legal traditions. I know that there's always another way, a new perspective, and as a comparativist, I'm compelled to find valuable lessons from other jurisdictions . . . from Germany's approach to medical error disclosure to the EU's approach to AI liability.
"The pace of this change [in medical science and technology] is so great that lawyers are obliged, in discharge of their functions as the protectors of community values, to learn from the experiences of their colleagues abroad. Otherwise, the law will simply be left behind, struggling with the problems posed by yesterday's technology and suffering from a serious crisis of validity."
- Dieter Giesen
