Month: February 2015

BOOK LAUNCH (3/11): Identified versus Statistical Lives: An Interdisciplinary Approach

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Book Launch: Identified versus Statistical Lives: An Interdisciplinary Approach

March 11, 2015 12:00 PM

Wasserstein Hall, Room 2012 Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

Identified versus Statistical Lives: An Interdisciplinary Approach is an edited volume that grew out of the 2012 conference “Identified versus Statistical Lives: Ethics and Public Policy,” cosponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, and the Harvard Global Health Institute. The essays address the identified lives effect, which describes the fact that people demonstrate a stronger inclination to assist persons and groups identified as at high risk of great harm than those who will or already suffer similar harm, but endure unidentified. As a result of this effect, we allocate resources reactively rather than proactively, prioritizing treatment over prevention. Such bias raises practical and ethical questions that extend to almost every aspect of human life and politics.

The book talk and discussion will feature:

  • I. Glenn Cohen, co-editor, Petrie-Flom Faculty Director, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
  • Norman Daniels, co-editor, Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Harvard School of Public Health
  • Nir Eyal, co-editor, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine (Medical Ethics), Harvard Medical School

Co-sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library, with support from the Harvard Global Health Institute.

Youth Sports at a Crossroads (and Project Play Summit streaming today 2/25)

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By: Christine Baugh

Youth sports participation comes with a variety of health and social benefits. The position statement put out by the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) indicates that over 27 million individuals age 8-17 participate in team sports in the United States, and over 60 million participate in some form of organized athletic activity. These youth and adolescent athletes benefit from  better overall health as well as increased socialization and self-esteem. However, a recent report by the Aspen Institute’s Project Play Initiative indicates that there has been a significant decline in sports participation in recent years.

One factor influencing the decrease in participation may be parental concerns. A recent survey of parents conducted jointly by ESPNw and the Aspen Institute characterized these concerns finding a large percentage of parents were worried about the risk of injury, behavior of coaches, cost, time commitment, and the emphasis on winning over having fun. Concussions and head injuries were the most worrisome injury for parents in this study. Despite this concern, very few parents reported keeping their child from participating in sports due to this risk. The AMSSM position statement characterizes the preoccupation with specialization and competition within sports at such a young age as a risk factor for injury and burnout. Read More

‘The Week in Health Law’ Podcast

Nicolas P. Terry Leave a comment

By Nicolas Terry

twihl 14x14Frank Pasquale and Nicolas Terry are pleased to announce The Week in Health Law Podcast. We (and our guests) enjoy a commuting-length discussion about some of the more thorny issues in Health Law & Policy.

Subscribe at iTunes, listen at Stitcher Radio and Podbean, or search for The Week in Health Law in your favorite podcast app.

This week, a special treat, as we are joined by Nicole Huberfeld to discuss Medicaid expansion (as well as Google health searches and bending the safety curve).

Show notes and more are at TWIHL.com. If you have comments, an idea for a show or a topic to discuss you can find us at @nicolasterry @FrankPasquale

NEW DATE (3/9): Gender (Re)assignment: Legal, Ethical, and Conceptual Issues

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

genderreassignment_slideGender (Re)assignment: Legal, Ethical, and Conceptual Issues

Monday, March 9, 2015 12:00 PM

Pound Hall, Room 102, Harvard Law School, 1563 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA

Trans and intersex individuals face a series of legal, medical, and social challenges. This panel explores these overlapping issues, including: healthcare coverage of treatments such as gender reassignment therapy, the legal recognition of trans identities, intersexuality, and asexuality.  Join us for a wide-ranging panel discussion.

Panelists include:

  • Noa Ben-Asher, Visiting Associate Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
  • Elizabeth F. Emens, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
  • Gerald L. Neuman, J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law, Harvard Law School
  • Matthew J.B. Lawrence, Academic Fellow, Petrie-Flom Center
  • Moderator: I. Glenn Cohen, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and Faculty Director, Petrie-Flom Center

This event is free and open to the public. Lunch will be served.

Cosponsored by the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School and Lambda at Harvard Law School.

TOMORROW: Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law, and Ethics

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Cohen_Medical_Tourism_slidePatients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law, and Ethics
I. Glenn Cohen and Dr. Robert Klitzman

Tuesday, February 24, 5:30 – 7:00 PM ET

Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

Merrill House 170 East 64th Street, New York, NY 10065-7478

Live Video Stream HERE

 

Medical tourism is a growing, multi-billion dollar industry involving millions of patients who travel abroad each year to get health care.

Some seek services like hip replacements and travel to avoid queues, save money, or because their insurer has given them an incentive to do so. Others seek to circumvent prohibitions on accessing services at home and go abroad to receive abortions, assisted suicide, commercial surrogacy, or experimental stem cell treatments.

How safe are these procedures? How do you ensure that you will be protected if anything should happen?

I. Glenn Cohen is professor of law at Harvard Law School and director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics. He is the author of Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law, and Ethics.

Dr. Robert Klitzman will lead the conversation. He is a professor of psychiatry in the College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Joseph Mailman School of Public Health and the director of the Masters of Bioethics Program at Columbia University.

This event is part of Carnegie Council’s Global Health Series.

NEXT WEEK (3/4): The Policeman at the Elbow: The Neuroscience of Addiction, Self-Control, and Criminal Responsibility

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

The Policeman at the Elbow: The Neuroscience of Addiction, Self-Control, and Criminal Responsibility

drugs_freebasing_slideWednesday, March 4, 2015
12:00 PM 

Wasserstein Hall, Room 3019
Harvard Law School
1585 Massachusetts Ave.,
Cambridge, MA 02138

Do criminal penalties have any deterrent effect on drug addicts – people who already are willing to throw away their jobs, relationships, or even lives for their “fix”?  What does brain science tell us about addicts’ capacities to exert self control and to be held criminally responsible?  This panel discussion brings together a leading neuroscientist of addiction, a criminal law scholar, and a former judge to ask whether the law should reconsider aspects of responsibility and punishment in light of new science about self-control.

Panelists:

  • Joshua Buckholtz, Assistant Professor, Harvard University Department of Psychology
  • Amanda Pustilnik, Senior Fellow in Law and Applied Neuroscience, Petrie-Flom Center/Center for Law Brain and Behavior, and Associate Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law
  • Judge Nancy Gertner, Senior Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School

Part of the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience.

Doctors Conducting Peer Review Can Recover Compensatory and Punitive Damages for Confidentiality Violations

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By Alex Stein

The Supreme Court of New Mexico has recently delivered an important decision protecting peer reviewers’ statutory entitlement to confidentiality. Yedidag v. Roswell Clinic Corp., — P.3d —- (N.M. 2015), 2015 WL 691333. The Court ruled that peer reviewers can sue violators of their confidentiality right and recover compensatory and even punitive damages. This ruling applied the common law criteria for identifying statutory violations as a breach of contract. Based on those criteria, the Court categorized peer reviewers as members of the class protected by the peer review statute, who deserve remedies for violations of their confidentiality right. The Court also estimated that the criminal penalty imposed by the statute on the right’s violators was too lenient to discourage violations. The Court projected that allowing peer reviewers to sue violators will compensate for the resulting shortfall in deterrence. As a conceptual matter, the Court decided that peer reviewers’ confidentiality entitlement is a “mandatory rule of law incorporated into physician-reviewer employment contracts.” Read More

UCLA, CREA, and FDA

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By Emily Largent

Before law school, I worked as a nurse at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.  The work was interesting, as was the news.  I was there when the Los Angeles Times published an investigation revealing that Japanese gang figures received liver transplants at UCLA and when the Times reported on UCLA employees illegally viewing medical records of celebrities.

This week, UCLA made headlines once again when officials announced that nearly 180 patients may have been exposed to a potentially deadly superbug from contaminated duodenoscopes.  Seven UCLA patients–two of whom died–were infected with carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) after a procedure known as endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP).  CRE are a family of germs that are difficult to treat because they have high levels of antibiotic resistance, and CRE can lead to death in up to 50% of patients who become infected.

This problem is not unique to UCLA.  The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center had a duodenoscope-related outbreak in 2012. Last month, Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle acknowledged that 32 patients were sickened by contaminated endoscopes from 2012 to 2014.  Eleven of those patients died.  From January 2013 to December 2014, the FDA received 75 Medical Device Reports (MDRs) related to possible microbial transmission from duodenoscopes.

The FDA issued a safety communication yesterday, February 19th, which warned doctors that the complex design of duodenoscopes may impede effective reprocessing.  Reprocessing is a multi-step process to clean and disinfect or sterilize reusable devices.  The FDA noted that multi-drug resistant infections have been associated with reprocessed duodenoscopes “even when manufacturer reprocessing instructions are followed correctly.” (UCLA stated that its scopes had been sterilized in line with the manufacturer’s standards.)  Nevertheless, the FDA urged medical providers to carefully follow manufacturers’ cleaning instructions and talk to patients about the benefits and risks of undergoing procedures involving duodenoscopes.

Some have argued that this did not go far enough.  What other options are available to the FDA?

Read More

Monday 2/23: HLS Health Law Workshop with Amy Kapczynski

Jennifer Minnich Leave a comment

HLS Health Law Workshop: Amy Kapczynski

February 23, 2015 5:00 PM
Griswold Hall, Room 110 (Harvard Law School)
1525 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA [Map here.]

Professor Kapczynski’s presentation, “Order Without Intellectual Property Law:  The Flu Network as a Case Study in Open Science,” is available upon request. Please contact Jennifer Minnich (jminnich@law.harvard.edu) if you would like a copy.

Amy Kapczynski is an Associate Professor of Law at Yale Law School and director of the Global Health Justice Partnership. She joined the Yale Law faculty in January 2012. Her areas of research including information policy, intellectual property law, international law, and global health. Prior to coming to Yale, she taught at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. She also served as a law clerk to Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Stephen G. Breyer at the U.S. Supreme Court, and to Judge Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She received her A.B. from Princeton University, M. Phil. from Cambridge University, M.A. from Queen Mary and Westfield College at University of London, and J.D. from Yale Law School.