A needle in a haystack – finding the elusive solution to Indiana’s HIV Outbreak

By Nicolas Wilhelm, JD

Scott County, Indiana, which only has a few thousand residents, has historically had an average of five HIV cases per year. Since December 2014, however, the county has seen an outbreak, with more than 140 newly diagnosed cases. Dr. Jonathan Mermin, the director of the National Center for HIV/AIDs, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) calls this “one of the worst documented outbreaks of HIV among IV users in the past two decades.” Dr. Joan Duwve, the chief medical consultant with the Indiana State Department of Health, explained that the abuse of the prescription drug Opana was one of the catalysts for the increase in HIV cases, with some residents injecting it as frequently as 10 times a day, and sharing syringes with other members of their community.

HIV is mainly spread either by sexual contact with another person with HIV, or by sharing needles or syringes with someone who has HIV. One way to reduce the spread of the disease is to implement syringe exchange programs (SEPs) that reduce the transmission of blood-borne pathogens like HIV by providing free sterile syringes and collecting used syringes from injection-drug users (IDUs).

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Faculty Director I. Glenn Cohen: New Blood-Donor Policy, Same Gay Stigma

Faculty Director I. Glenn Cohen has co-authored a new Op-Ed in the New York Times:

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration released highly anticipated draft recommendations that would allow gay men to donate blood after one year of celibacy. While an improvement from the current, highly criticized lifetime ban, the new policy, which was announced in December, still caters to fear and stigma rather than science. It should be reconsidered. […]

Read the full article here.

Rutgers Journal of Bioethics: Call for Papers (8/30)

From the Rutgers Journal of Bioethics:

As members of the Bioethics Society of Rutgers University, we hope to raise general awareness of issues in bioethics within the Rutgers community by method of discussion and publication. Although the beliefs and opinions regarding bioethical issues of this group are not unanimous, we are united by our ardent belief that the student population at Rutgers should be made aware of the implications of biological research, medicine, and other topics of bioethical controversy. In order to bring to light these issues, we are now accepting any papers that fall under the vast umbrella that is bioethics. All papers will be considered for possible publication. Some example subjects are medical treatment, biological warfare, research ethics, medical sociology, social justice, history of medicine/science, medical case analysis, eugenics, gene therapy, human cloning, medical malpractice, and healthcare policy; however, you are not limited to these topics.

DEADLINE: AUGUST 30, 2015

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‘The Week in Health Law’ Podcast

By Nicolas Terry

twihl 14x14

This week we are joined by Nicole Huberfeld who brings us up to date on ACA developments including St Louis Effort for AIDS v Huff, Armstrong v Exceptional Child Center, and the situation in Florida.

The Week in Health Law Podcast from Frank Pasquale and Nicolas Terry is 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.

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 on twitter @nicolasterry @FrankPasquale @WeekInHealthLaw

Grading the ACA as Equal Protection Statute

The Affordable Care Act is sprawling.  Some of its myriad provisions may (or may not!) reduce healthcare costs.  Think of accountable care organizations, the hospital readmission reduction program, or even the preventive services mandate.  And so, the Act’s success is often evaluated by asking whether it has helped reduce healthcare costs.  (See, e.g., David Cutler here.)

Other of the ACA’s provisions are intended to promote financial security in the face of illness.  The Act’s most litigated provisions, requiring that people buy insurance, expanding Medicaid, and creating exchanges, can be understood primarily in this light.  And so, the Act’s success is also often evaluated by asking whether it has truly promoted financial security.  (See today’s New York Times piece from Margoret Sangor-Katz on the subject of underinsurance post-ACA, or Aaron E. Carroll’s take from December.)

A third way of understanding the ACA’s reforms–and evaluating its success or failure–too often gets left out (as it was by the NY Times here): The ACA can perhaps most coherently be thought of as an equal protection statute.

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Medical Malpractice and the Middle-Ground Fallacy: Should Victims’ Families Recover Compensation for Emotional Harm?

By Alex Stein

Medical malpractice victims are generally entitled to recover compensation for emotional harm they endure: see, e.g., Alexander v. Scheid, 726 N.E.2d 272, 283–84 (Ind. 2000). But what about a victim’s close family member? Take a person who suffers emotional distress from witnessing a medical mistreatment and the consequent injury or demise of her loved one. Should the court obligate the negligent physician or hospital to compensate that person for her emotional harm?

This question has no uniform answer under our medical malpractice laws. Some states allow victims’ families to recover compensation for their emotional harm, while others do not. Three weeks ago, the Connecticut Supreme Court struck a middle ground between these two extremes. Squeo v. Norwalk Hosp. Ass’n, 316 Conn. 558, — A.3d —- (Conn. 2015). Read More

International Neuroethics Society Student Essay Contest: Deadline 5/20!

Remember to submit your 2000 word essay for consideration in the INS Student Essay Contest.  The top two submissions will be awarded:

  • $250 Michael Patterson Travel Stipend to attend the 2015 INS Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL (Oct 15-16), where there will be special networking opportunities,
  • One year free INS student membership,
  • Essay published in the Kopf Carrier (Newsletter of Kopf Instruments) as part of the “Neuroethics in Neuroscience Series” edited by Judy Illes (Director, National Core for Neuroethics, UBC),
  • Essay fast-tracked for peer-review if it (or a subsequent draft) is subsequently submitted to the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience (AJOB-N); separate submission would be required.

Who can apply: All current post-secondary students of any nationality; a student is defined as anyone enrolled in a degree granting program (undergraduate, graduate, or professional) during the 2014-2015 academic year.

Requirements: Essays must be 2000 words or less, written in English, and double spaced.  Cover page and essay should be saved as a single file in the format “Surname_INS_Student_Essay_Prize.doc” and emailed to administrator@neuroethicssociety.org with the subject line: “INS Student Essay Prize”.  Additional requirements can be found on the INS website.

Selection Criteria: Essays will be judged on originality of argument, rigor of defense, and quality of prose; a short-list will be generated by the Student Essay Prize Judging Committee and the top two selected from the shortlist through forum discussion.

Deadline: 5 p.m. ET on May 20, 2015

The Robust But Unsatisfying State Of Health Care Fraud Enforcement

By Zack Buck

Earlier this spring, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Justice reported they had recovered nearly $28 billion as a result of anti-health care fraud efforts in FY 2014. The federal False Claims Act played a substantial role in achieving these recoveries: the government recovered $2.3 billion in FCA settlements and judgments, and opened nearly 800 new civil health fraud investigations, in FY 2014 alone. Further, the agencies noted that these anti-fraud efforts—bolstered by increased funding and authority under the Affordable Care Act—are continuing to abandon the “pay and chase” method of fraud enforcement, relying instead on prevention and “real-time data analysis.”

Interestingly, it is no longer just the federal government driving the enforcement regime. Increasingly, facing Medicaid shortfalls, states are getting involved—and, according to practitioners, state enforcement is “exploding.” For example, in New York, its Office of Medicaid Inspector General recovered more than $1.7 billion from FY 2011 to 2013. States have also had success in litigating claims to trial, most recently illustrated by the notable South Carolina Supreme Court verdict against pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson. Further, Vermont is likely to become the newest state to establish its own state false claims act, another wide-ranging and powerful statute that mirrors the federal FCA.

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Two Cheers for Corporate Experimentation

Rubin's vase2By Michelle Meyer

I have a new law review article out, Two Cheers for Corporate Experimentation: The A/B Illusion and the Virtues of Data-Driven Innovation, arising out of last year’s terrific Silicon Flatirons annual tech/privacy conference at Colorado Law, the theme of which was “When Companies Study Their Customers.”

This article builds on, but goes well beyond, my prior work on the Facebook experiment in Wired (mostly a wonky regulatory explainer of the Common Rule and OHRP engagement guidance as applied to the Facebook-Cornell experiment, albeit with hints of things to come in later work) and Nature (a brief mostly-defense of the ethics of the experiment co-authored with 5 ethicists and signed by an additional 28, which was necessarily limited in breadth and depth by both space constraints and the need to achieve overlapping consensus).

Although I once again turn to the Facebook experiment as a case study (and also to new discussions of the OkCupid matching algorithm experiment and of 401(k) experiments), the new article aims at answering a much broader question than whether any particular experiment was legal or ethical. Read More

Check out the latest news from the Petrie-Flom Center!

Check out the May 15th edition of the Petrie-Flom Center’s biweekly e-newsletter for the latest on events, affiliate news and scholarship, and job and fellowship opportunities in health law policy and bioethics.

Featured in this edition:

brain_pain_slide_270_174_85REGISTER NOW!
Visible Solutions: How Neuroimaging Helps Law Re-envision Pain

June 30, 2015, 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Wasserstein Hall, Milstein West A
Harvard Law School,
1585 Massachusetts Ave.,
Cambridge, MA [Map]

Can brain imaging be a “pain-o-meter” that tells courts when a person is in pain?  Can fMRI help us discern whether intractable chronic pain is “all in your head” or all in the brain – or will it require us to reconsider that distinction? Leading neuroscientists, legal scholars, and bioethicists will debate standards and limits on how the law can use brain science to get smarter about a subject that touches everyone.

Agenda

The full agenda will be announced in the coming weeks. Check back here for news!

Registration

This event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and registration is required. Register now!

This event is part of the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience, a collaboration between the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. Cosponsored by the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, and with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund. 

 For more on news and events at Petrie-Flom, see the full newsletter.