ChatGPT And Works Scholarly

 In 2023, my colleagues, Professors Bill Tomlinson and Rebecca Black, and I published an article in the SMU Law Review entitled "ChatGPT and Works Scholarly:  Best Practices and Legal Pitfalls in Writing with AI".  It discusses the power and pitfalls of co-authoring with AI.  Morgan Kromer, of The College Fix, covered our article, and a fun chat he had with me, on February 19, 2025.

Should California Stay Or Should It Go?

I had the good fortune of being interviewed by journalist Elizabeth Weise for her article, written with Josh Peter, today (January 24, 2025) in USA Today, entitled "A free California? Trump visits as initiative to leave U.S. cleared to gather signatures".  Her interest was sparked by an article Prof. Bill Tomlinson and I published in 2020, entitled "Fault Lines: An Empirical Legal Study of California Secession", available here.   Here's the article by Weise and Peter:  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/01/24/country-of-california-secession-newsom-trump/77907859007/

	Trump greeted by Newsom in Los Angeles ahead of wildfires tour Trump and Newsom have been trading barbs over water. How far could this dispute go? www.usatoday.com

The conundrum California faces is nicely summarized by The Clash, in its song, "Should I stay or should I go?":

Whatever route California decides to take, it will not easy:  "If I go, there will be trouble.  And, if I stay, it will be double."

Third Time's A Trademark

 Matthew Kelly wrote a very nice article about how trademark law might affect use of the phrase "Three Peat" to describe a third consecutive Kansas City Super Bowl victory in February 2025.  To kick off the trademark issues implicated by "Three Peat", Matthew interviewed, and quoted, me in the article.  

Innovation Hypercycles - The Rise and Fall of Technology Hotspots

On the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic (January 26, 2020), I was invited to Queen's University, where I gave a TEDx talk on my theory of innovation hypercycles, entitled "The Birth and Death of Technology Hotspots".  With that pandemic in the rearview mirror, on September 9, 2024, I was honoured to deliver, as my inaugural lecture on being named the Paul E. Wilson Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Kansas, an updated and expanded version, called "Innovation Hypercycles - The Rise of Fall of Technology Hotspots".  Thank you very much to both universities for the opportunity to share my ideas.

The Misinformation Malady

 The brilliant Matt Ridley quoted me in his November 25, 2024, article in THE SPECTATOR, "The ‘experts’ who enabled RFK Jr’s rise".

After Casgevy Follows A Genome Editing Bevy

Today, December 8, 2023, the United States Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") emulated its British equivalent, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, by approving the CRISPR/Cas9-based therapy Casgevy, a gene editing treatment for sickle cell disease ("SCD").  As it did in the United Kingdom, this approval marks a milestone in therapeutic history in the United States.   Here is how the FDA described Casgevy:

Casgevy, a cell-based gene therapy, is approved for the treatment of sickle cell disease in patients 12 years of age and older with recurrent vaso-occlusive crises. Casgevy is the first FDA-approved therapy utilizing CRISPR/Cas9, a type of genome editing technology. Patients’ hematopoietic (blood) stem cells are modified by genome editing using CRISPR/Cas9 technology.

CRISPR/Cas9 can be directed to cut DNA in targeted areas, enabling the ability to accurately edit (remove, add, or replace) DNA where it was cut. The modified blood stem cells are transplanted back into the patient where they engraft (attach and multiply) within the bone marrow and increase the production of fetal hemoglobin (HbF), a type of hemoglobin that facilitates oxygen delivery. In patients with sickle cell disease, increased levels of HbF prevent the sickling of red blood cells.

The FDA was impressed by the strong performance of Casgevy in clinical trials:

The safety and effectiveness of Casgevy were evaluated in an ongoing single-arm, multi-center trial in adult and adolescent patients with SCD. Patients had a history of at least two protocol-defined severe VOCs during each of the two years prior to screening. The primary efficacy outcome was freedom from severe VOC episodes for at least 12 consecutive months during the 24-month follow-up period. A total of 44 patients were treated with Casgevy. Of the 31 patients with sufficient follow-up time to be evaluable, 29 (93.5%) achieved this outcome. All treated patients achieved successful engraftment with no patients experiencing graft failure or graft rejection. 

The most common side effects were low levels of platelets and white blood cells, mouth sores, nausea, musculoskeletal pain, abdominal pain, vomiting, febrile neutropenia (fever and low white blood cell count), headache and itching.

The FDA granted the license for Casgevy to biotechnology firm, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc..  However, many other biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are waiting in the line for the FDA to grant approval to their genome editing therapies. 

Clonan the Barbarian and the Mastiff Landslide

 Argentina voted overwhelmingly on November 19, 2023, for Javier Milei to become its next president.  President Milei has a fascinating biography, which includes having played goalie for the Club Atlético Chacarita junior team, sung for the Rolling Stones cover band Everest, taught economics in universities for more than two decades, and hosted his own radio show.  Even more fascinating, however, are his dogs.  As of his election as president, he had five English Mastiffs.  Not only are four named for Milei's favourite three economists (that is, Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, and Robert Lucas), they are also reputed to be clones of his first English Mastiff, Conan.

It may or may not be true that all politicians are alike.  However, Milei's English Mastiffs are all extremely similar, which is unsurprising given their apparent provenance as clones.

Medicine's CRISPR Focus

 The United Kingdom Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency ("MHRA") made history today when it approved the medicine "Casgevy" for the treatment of sickle-cell disease and transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia in patients aged 12 and older.  As the MHRA announced in a press release,

Casgevy is the first medicine to be licensed that uses the innovative gene-editing tool CRISPR, for which its inventors were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2020.  

Both sickle cell disease and β-thalassemia are genetic conditions caused by errors in the genes for haemoglobin, which is used by red blood cells to carry oxygen around the body. Sickle cell disease is particularly common in people with an African or Caribbean family background. β-thalassemia mainly affects people of Mediterranean, south Asian, southeast Asian and Middle Eastern origin. 

In people with sickle cell disease, this genetic error can lead to attacks of very severe pain, serious and life-threatening infections, and anaemia (whereby your body has difficulty carrying oxygen). 

In people with β-thalassaemia, it can lead to severe anaemia. Patients often need a blood transfusion every 3 to 5 weeks, and injections and medicines throughout their lives. 

Casgevy is designed to work by editing the faulty gene in a patient’s bone marrow stem cells so that the body produces functioning haemoglobin. To do this, stem cells are taken out of bone marrow, edited in a laboratory and then infused back into the patient after which the results have the potential to be life-long. 

Here's how Casgevy, developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston, Massachusetts, and CRISPR Therapeutics in Zug, Switzerland, works:

Casgevy is administered by taking stem cells out of a patient’s bone marrow and editing a gene in the cells in a laboratory. Patients must then undergo conditioning treatment to prepare the bone marrow before the modified cells are infused back into the patient. After that, patients may need to spend at least a month in a hospital facility while the treated cells take up residence in the bone marrow and start to make red blood cells with the stable form of haemoglobin.

Sickle-cell disease and transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia are painful and debilitating conditions that disproportionately afflict the poor.  Casgevy marks a landmark, heralding the beginning of CRISPR-based therapeutics approved for the market, and, more importantly, for the treatment of patients. 

COPs And Robbers

 The 27th Conference of the Parties ("COP 27") to the Framework Convention on Climate Change ("FCCC") wrapped up several days late, on November 20, 2022, and myriad dollars short of those needed to limit global warning to 1.5°C.  Buried within its dense diplomatic verbiage, the "Draft decision" negotiated at COP 27 features two notable statements.  First, the goal of limiting global mean temperature rise to 1.5 °C remains squishy, with the parties not committing, but "resolv[ing] to pursue further efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C" (Draft decision, I(7)).  Second, section VI of the Draft decision, entitled "Loss and damage", contemplates de facto liability by rich countries for damages caused to poorer countries by the effects of climate change.  To a betting person, the odds the world will exceed the "limit" of 1.5 °C would now seem to have shortened.  Meanwhile, the odds rich countries will come anywhere close to committing the financial resources necessary to meet the spirit of the new "loss and damage" obligation will surely start off as very long.

There is a silver lining to the Draft decision reached at COP 27:  once the 400 or so private jets that flew climate delegates and lobbyists to the negotiations depart, the carbon footprint of the host city, Sharm el-Sheikh, is likely to settle back down to its usual level.

ALI

I'm deeply honoured to have been elected a member of the American Law Institute ("ALI") in July 2022. I look forward to doing my best to contribute to the important mission of this wonderful organization:  “to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to encourage and carry on scholarly and scientific legal work.”