Case 1: An airline pilot is found to carry the gene for Huntington's disease--a late-onset condition that affects the nervous system. Citing doctor-patient confidentiality, he asks his physician not to inform his employer. What is the doctor's legal and ethical responsibility?

Case 2: A septuagenarian needs dialysis to survive. Though she has never expressed an opinion on right-to-death issues, her family insists that "she wouldn't have wanted to live like this." Does the judge yield to their request that dialysis be discontinued?

These are just two of many knotty questions that advances in biomedicine are raising. Others, equally perplexing, relate to organ transplantation, reproductive technology, fetal tissue research, gene therapy, and AIDS. How should lawyers and the legal system respond?

"Less is more," says Roger Dworkin '66 of the University of Indiana School of Law. "We should always start from the assumption of no legal involvement. When necessary, we should escalate slowly, cautiously, one step at a time, and only to the extent that we have both the need and ability to do so."

Dworkin, who became Indiana's inaugural Ronald A. Lucas Professor on July 1, is an internationally recognized expert on the relationship of law and biomedicine. His most recent book, Early Warning: Cases and Ethical Guidance for Presymptomatic Testing in Genetic Diseases (Indiana University Press, 1998), is the fruit of a three-year study funded by the Human Genome Project. Dworkin was the sole lawyer on a six-person team of authors, including two physicians, a psychologist, a journalist, and a religious studies scholar. The researchers studied 29 true-life cases in which value conflicts existed, explored the legal and ethical responses to each situation, and then proposed general guidelines.

In this and other work, Dworkin combines rigorous scholarship with clinical involvement. His scholarly bent earned him a Phi Beta Kappa key at Princeton (AB '63), election to the Order of the Coif, membership in Stanford Law Review, a research assistantship to Professor Herbert Packer, and appointment in 1968 to the Indiana faculty. Three books, numerous articles, a previous endowed professorship, and various awards grace his vita.

Most striking, however, is Dworkin's determination, over 25-plus years of work on law and biomedical advances, to avoid what he terms "the sin of science fiction." He spent the 1974­75 year at the University of Washington Medical School auditing courses and observing actual cases in the clinics and wards. This, combined with his expertise in torts, led to an invitation to explain tort-liability risk in recombinant DNA research to scientists and doctors at the landmark Asilomar conference of 1975.

Dworkin has since spent several summers and a teaching year at the Washington medical center, served since 1985 on the Bloomington Hospital Ethics Advisory Committee, organized conferences for lawyers and health professionals, written for a variety of medical and public health journals, lectured medical audiences in this country and Europe, and participated in National Academy of Sciences, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Health, Education & Welfare deliberations. He is an associate of the Hastings Center and an honorary member of two medical associations.

In the law community, Dworkin has lectured on medical/legal issues at both the National Judicial College and the ABA Appellate Judges Conference, coauthored the text Cases and Materials on Law and Medicine (Foundation Press, 1980), and written a second book, Limits: The Role of the Law in Bioethical Decision Making (Indiana, 1996), and numerous law review articles.

Since 1991, Dworkin has also been senior scholar and director of medical studies for Indiana University's Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions.

"Every serious issue raised by biomedical advance involves conflict between right and right," he noted in a telephone interview from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he is spending the 1999­2000 year researching and writing. Dworkin cited the example of AIDS, where the principle of patient confidentiality comes up against the right of a patient's intimates not to be unknowingly exposed to infection. "The challenge," he says, "is to avoid running roughshod over the individual, but still protect other affected individuals."

Winner of two teaching awards at Indiana, Dworkin admits to a "passion for the process of teaching." He continues to teach first-year torts, where he enjoys "awakening students to the value of rigor and the evils of sloppiness--the importance of hard thought." In general, he hopes students at all levels come to understand that "learning how to deal with uncertainty is perhaps the most important thing that lawyers have to do."

Also important, he says, is "to turn off your lawyer's approach to life when the workday is finished." Dworkin's non-work hours are spent with his wife, Terry Morehead Dworkin (Stanford AB '64, Indiana JD '75), chair of the business law department at IU's School of Business. Their sons, both Stanford alumni, are now a Princeton professor and a Portland Oregonian reporter.

Matt Gonzalez '90 is the first to admit that what he did was unusual. "Public defenders don't usually run for district attorney," he said.

A deputy public defender in San Francisco for the past seven years, Gonzalez finished third among five candidates in the Nov. 3 election for the city's top prosecutorial job, attracting 11 percent of the vote.

Gonzalez made a good showing for a candidate with neither significant financial backing nor name recognition when the campaign began. He won the endorsements of several political organizations and nearly earned a thumbs-up from the influential Harvey Milk Democratic Club, but that group chose not to endorse anyone after splitting between Gonzalez and Terence Hallinan. Lacking the Milk endorsement and the financial and psychological boost it would have created, Gonzalez had to depend on grassroots organization, a website and neighborhood events to build support. "We knew when we started that we needed a certain amount of Democratic club support to show that we were viable," he said. "After receiving some of these endorsements, the press began to look at our candidacy more seriously."

A debate between the five candidates at Golden Gate University Law School in October offered a chance for Gonzalez, an accomplished debater, to win over undecided voters. At the time of the debate, according to a San Francisco Chronicle article, more than half of the electorate was undecided. "Clearly, this incumbent is vulnerable," Gonzalez said. "The key is for us to get our message out there."

Attracting funding support was the next major goal of the campaign. "Believe it or not, I haven't made a single telephone call asking for money," Gonzalez said six weeks before the election. "All of the events we had have been designed to create interest in the campaign, not to raise money. But once we had these endorsements people began writing us checks."

Gonzalez is widely acknowledged to be an outstanding trial lawyer. "I don't think there's much disagreement about the fact that Matt is one of the best trial lawyers in the city," said Whitney Leigh '90, a friend and supporter. Peter Keane, Dean of Golden Gate University Law School, called Gonzalez "the most brilliant, creative, ethical trial lawyer I have ever known in more than thirty years of law practice."

What he does not have, concedes Gonzalez, is political experience. But he did not see that as a drawback for a progressive candidate committed to using the DA's office to promote social change. "If the DA really wants to be the mayor, or has some political aspirations beyond the district attorney's office, that's bad," he said. "I want to be the district attorney. That is the job where I feel I can do some good."

Gonzalez, 34, behaves more like a public defender than a district attorney. He wears Doc Martens shoes in the courtroom, drives a 30-year-old Mercedes-Benz, and spends much of his leisure time reading books in the coffee shops of the Mission district of San Francisco. Running for political office is not something he particularly enjoys. "There's a redundancy associated with getting your message out to people. It gets boring listening to yourself. I would much rather be reading books and drinking coffee," he said.

Nevertheless, the experience has been rewarding. "I have enjoyed seeing democracy in action," he said. "It's nice to know that people out there still care and are willing to spend time listening to the issues."