• Directory
• Login
• Contact
• Apply

Jonathan Kahn

In 2007, he received a grant from National Human Genome Research Institute's (NHGRI) Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) Research Program to support a two year project in which he is exploring the ethical and legal ramifications of the increasing use of racial and ethnic categories in the context of gene patenting and drug development.

Dr. Kahn is a nationally recognized expert on this topic. His scholarly research and writing related to the legal and ethical implications of how racial categories are produced and disseminated in the course of drug development are widely published, including the article "Race in a Bottle" in the August 2007 issue of Scientific American. The article pertains to BiDil, the first medication ever approved by the FDA to be targeted to a specific racial group. An exhibit quoting Dr. Kahn on this topic also is part of the nationally touring "RACE" exhibit, most recently on display at the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Kahn has published is a wide array of journals ranging from the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics, Seton Hall Law Review, and the Stanford Law & Policy Journal to the American Journal of Bioethics, the American Journal of Public Health, and Nature Genetics. He has also published a book titled Budgeting Democracy: State-Building and Citizenship in America, 1890-1928 (Cornell U. Press, 1997) His previous grants include a major grant from the National Institutes of Health to support a project titled: "Colliding Categories: Haplotypes, Race, and Ethnicity." Most recently, he published an article in the Iowa Law Review titled, "Race-ing Patents/Patenting Race: An Emerging Political Geography of Intellectual Property in Biotechnology." Dr. Kahn's comprehensive research can be viewed at http://ssrn.com/author=180388.

Before coming to Hamline, Kahn practiced with the firm of Hogan & Hartson after graduating from law school, and then went on to complete his PhD and teach at Bard College. Later a Visiting Associate Professor at Harvard University, he has also taught at the University of Minnesota, Cornell University School of Law and Western New England School of Law.

"Law is a powerful tool to shape society and serve the common good. In training new lawyers it is important to impart not only an understanding of what the legal system demands of them, but also a commitment to figure out what they should demand of the legal system."

Professor Kahn Appeared on Democracy Now on August 1, 2005 for a program entitled "The FDA Approves a Race-Specific Drug for the First Time in History. Will it Address the Real Health Issues Facing African-Americans? ". Transcript | mp3 (courtesy of Democracy Now!)

Selected Publications

• "Race-ing Patents/Patenting Race: An Emerging Political Geography of Intellectual Property in Biotechnology" ", 92 Iowa Law Review 353 (2007)"
• "Genes, Race, and Population: Avoiding a Collision of Categories" ", 96 American Journal of Public Health 6 (2006)"
• "Race, Pharmacogenomics, and Marketing: Putting BiDil in Context" ", 6 American Journal of Bioethics W1 (Sept./Oct. 2006)"
• "Exploiting Race in Drug Development: BiDil’s Interim Model of Pharmacogenomics" ", __ Social Studies of Science (forthcoming 2006)"
• "Surrogate Markers and Surrogate Marketing in Biomedicine: The Regulatory Etiology and Commercial Progression of 'Ethnic' Drug D ", in Biomedicalization (A. Clarke and others, eds., Duke University Press, forthcoming 2006)"
• "Abe Fortas" ", in The Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties (Paul Finkelman, ed., Routledge, 2006)"
• "Being Specific about Race-Specific Medicine" ", Health Affairs, web exclusive, 10.1377/hlthaff.25.w375 (Aug. 15, 2006) (with Pamela Sankar)"
• "Rights and Practical Access to Medicine" ", 84 Bulletin of the World Health Organization 406 (May 2006)"
• "Harmonizing Race: Competing Regulatory Paradigms of Racial Categorization in International Drug Development" ", 5 Santa Clara Journal of International Law 34 (2006)" PDF
• "Patenting Race" ", 24 Nature Biotechnology 1349 (2006)"
• "Patenting Race" ", 24 Nature Biotechnology 1349 (2006)"
• "From Disparity to Difference: How Race-Specific Medicines May Undermine Policies to Address Inequalities in Health Care" ", 15 Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Review 105 (2005)"
• "Controlling Identity: Plessy, Privacy, and Racial Defamation" ", 54 DePaul Law Review 755 (2005)" PDF
• "How a Drug Becomes ‘Ethnic’: Law, Commerce, and the Production of Racial Categories in Medicine" ", 4 Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics 1 (2004)"
• "Getting the Numbers Right: Statistical Mischief and Racial Profiling in Heart Failure Research" ", 46 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 473 (2003); reprinted in Health and Healing in Comparative Perspective 435 (Elizabeth D. Whitaker, ed., Prentice Hall, 2006)"
• "What's the Use? Law and Authority in Patenting Human Genetic Material" ", 14 Stanford Law & Policy Review 417 (2003)" PDF
• "Privacy as a Legal Principle of Identity Maintenance" ", 33 Seton Hall Law Review 371 (2003)" PDF
• Product Liability and the Politics of Corporate Presence: Identity and Accountability in MacPherson v. Buick , 35 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 3 (2001) PDF
• "Biotechnology and the Legal Constitution of the Self: Managing Identity in Science, the Market, and Society" ", 51 Hastings Law Journal 909 (2000)"
• "Bringing Dignity Back to Light: Publicity Rights and the Eclipse of the Tort of Appropriation of Identity" ", 17 Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 213 (1999)" PDF
• "Budgeting Democracy: State-Building and Citizenship in America, (1890-1928)" "(Cornell University Press, 1997)"
• "Enslaving the Image: The Origins of the Tort of Appropriation of Identity Reconsidered" ", 2 Legal Theory 301 (1996)"
• "Abe Fortas" ", in The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary (Melvyn Urofsky, ed., Garland, 1994)"
• "Re-Presenting Government and Representing the People: Budget Publicity and Citizenship in New York City, 1908-1911" ", 19 Journal of Urban History 84 (1993)"
• "What’s in a Name? Law’s Identity under the Tort of Appropriation" PDF