Month: November 2016

Monday, 11/28, Health Law Workshop with Frances Kamm

Jennifer Minnich Leave a comment

November 28, 2016 5-7 PM
Hauser Hall, Room 104
Harvard Law School, 1575 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

Presentation title: “Advanced and End of Life Care: Cautionary Suggestions”

This paper is not available for download. To request a copy in preparation for the workshop, please contact Jennifer Minnich at jminnich at law.harvard.edu.

Frances Kamm is the Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government and Professor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences.

She is the author of Creation and Abortion (1992); Morality, Mortality, Vol. 1: Death and Whom to Save From It (1993); Morality, Mortality, Vol. 2: Rights, Duties, and Status (1996); Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm (2007), and, most recently, Ethics for Enemies: Terror, Torture, & War (2011). She also has published many articles on normative ethical theory and practical ethics.

Professor Kamm has held ACLS, AAUW, and Guggenheim fellowships, and has been a Fellow of the Program in Ethics and the Professions at the Kennedy School, the Center for Human Values at Princeton, and the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford.

She is a member of the editorial boards of Philosophy & Public Affairs, Legal Theory, Bioethics, and Utilitas, and was a consultant on ethics to the World Health Organization.

NEW REPORT: Protecting and Promoting the Health of NFL Players – Legal and Ethical Analysis and Recommendations

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

fphs_lawethics_coverThe Football Players Health Study at Harvard University today released a set of legal and ethical recommendations to address a series of structural factors that affect NFL player health. The Football Players Health Study is a research initiative composed of several ongoing studies examining the health and wellbeing of NFL players.

The newly released report, nearly 500 pages long, is based on analysis performed over two years by researchers from the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School, and is unprecedented both in scope and focus. (Read the executive summary).

This is the first comprehensive analysis of the legal and ethical obligations of various stakeholders that influence the health of NFL players. While clinical interventions are essential, players’ health is also affected by the environment in which players work.

The report reviews and evaluates the roles of 20 relevant stakeholders, including the NFL, NFL Players Association (NFLPA), players, and Club (team) doctors.  In total, the report makes 76 recommendations.

Highlights of the key proposals are summarized below: Read More

Transparency and Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing Companies

Genetics in Medicine Leave a comment

By Linnea Laestadius, PhD, MPP

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing companies are now a fixture of U.S. consumer culture, with dozens of companies offering adults on-demand insights into their ancestry and health (sometimes loosely defined). While a compelling argument can be made for giving consumers the right to access information about their own genetic material, DTC-testing presents a range of legal and ethical concerns. Scholars and physicians have long been raising questions about the analytic validity, clinical validity, and clinical utility of these services. The FDA has increasingly worked to address these aspects of DTC-testing and has issued letters to multiple DTC genetic testing firms arguing that they are offering medical devices that should be subject to premarket review. Developments in this area continue to emerge and the FDA recently authorized marketing for 23andMe’s Bloom Syndrome carrier test, while also planning to exempt future carrier screening tests from premarket review.

These are clearly positive developments from the perspective of consumer protection, however, other aspects of DTC genetic testing remain largely unaddressed. Most notably, there are significant concerns about how firms handle consumer samples and data and how and if they use them for secondary purposes. To address this issue, Paul Auer, PhD, Jennifer Rich, MPH, and I set out to understand how transparent these firms are about their privacy, confidentiality, and secondary use policies. Recently published in Genetics in Medicine, this work offers an analysis of the terms-of-service and privacy policies of the top 30 DTC genetic testing firms that show up in a U.S. based web search.

While transparency about data practices varied across firms, a number of gaps appeared with regard to conveying information about the risks of data disclosure, the ultimate fate of samples and data, and use of data for research. Over the past decade, several major professional and governmental organizations have issued guidelines for transparency in these areas, including the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics and the European Society of Human Genetics. At present, it does not appear that non-binding guidelines have been sufficient to encourage widespread compliance with best practices on these topics. Read More

New dimensions in patient consent to treatment

John Tingle Leave a comment

By John Tingle

In the patient care equation doctors  and nurses will always be in a more dominant and powerful position. They have the professional  knowledge the patient needs, they are in their usual environment. The patient is ill, not in their usual environment and is often thinking the worst about their condition. The law recognises the need to correct this power imbalance and cases have gone to court over matters such as patient informed consent to treatment. Modern cases emphasise the importance of patient autonomy against that of medical paternalism. In the House of Lords case of Chester v Afshar [2004] UKHL 41 involving consent to treatment failures, Lord Steyn stated:

“In modern law medical paternalism no longer rules and a patient has a prima facie right to be informed by a surgeon of a small, but well established, risk of serious injury as a result of surgery.” (Para 16).

The focus of the modern day law and that of many professional health organisations policy development is on patient rights, trying to balance the unequal care equation. Read More

Terminally ill teen won historic court ruling to preserve her body after death

John Tingle Leave a comment

By John Tingle

The British media have been reporting and discussing widely the case of JS v M and F (Cryonic case), 10th November 2016 in the High Court of Justice, Family Division, [2016] EWHC 2859 (Fam). The case is the first in the UK and probably the world to deal with the issue of cryonics and a 14-year-old girls dying wish for her body to be preserved after her death with the hope that at some time in the future she will be brought back to life after a cure for her illness is found.

Truth is stranger than fiction and this case raises some fundamental legal and ethical issues which will occupy future courts and the legislature for some time to come. I could not imagine a more novel and difficult medical law case.

The facts

JS had a rare form of cancer and her active treatment came to an end in August when she started to receive palliative care. Over recent months she has used the internet to investigate cryonics: the freezing of a dead body in the hope that there may be a cure for the illness that she had and will be brought back to life at some future time. Mr Justice Peter Jackson heard the case and stated in his judgement that the scientific theory underlying cryonics is speculative and controversial and that there is considerable debate about its ethical implications. Since the first cryonic preservation in the 1960s,the process has been performed on very few individuals, numbering in the low hundreds. There are two commercial organisations in the United States and one in Russia for this form of preservation.She is one of only 10 Britons and the only British child to have been frozen by Cryonics UK , a non-profit organization. Her body was transported to the USA and is being stored in a vat of liquid nitrogen by the Cyronics Institute in Michigan. Read More

Monday, 11/21, Health Law Workshop with Elizabeth Weeks Leonard

Jennifer Minnich Leave a comment

November 21, 2016 5-7 PM
Hauser Hall, Room 104
Harvard Law School, 1575 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

Download the presentation materials: “Healthism:  Health Status Discrimination and the Law”

Elizabeth Weeks Leonard joined the Georgia Law faculty in 2011. She is currently a J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law. Her teaching and research interests include torts, health law, health care financing and regulation, and public health law.

Prior to coming to UGA, Weeks served on the faculty at the University of Kansas School of Law. During her time there, she was honored with the Howard M. and Susan Immel Award for Teaching Excellence and with the Meredith Docking Faculty Scholar Award, a university-wide honor for faculty who have distinguished themselves early in their careers. Additionally, she has served as a visiting professor at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law and at Georgia Law. Read More

REGISTER NOW (12/9)! Paying Research Participants: Ethical and Regulatory Parameters

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Rolled up US paper banknote in a test tube rack representing the costs of medical research

Paying Research Participants: Ethical and Regulatory Parameters
December 9, 2016 8:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Milstein East ABC (2036), Wasserstein Hall
Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA
Register for this event

Description

This symposium will bring together a variety of experts to discuss key ethical and legal questions regarding offers of payment to research participants. Panels will cover:

  • Why payment is offered to research participants
  • Regulatory parameters governing payment
  • Whether payment to research participants should be considered exceptional, compared to payment in other contexts
  • How offers of payment affect participants
  • How to define coercion and undue influence with regard to paying research participants
  • Which factors should be considered when evaluating proposed payments
  • The problem of low payment

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

Working Agenda

Read More

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS, DUE 12/2! 2017 Annual Conference, “Transparency in Health and Health Care: Legal and Ethical Possibilities and Limits”

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Medical care prices against a white background

2017 Annual Conference Call for Abstracts: Transparency in Health and Health Care – Legal and Ethical Possibilities and Limits
April 28, 2017 
Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East ABC (2036)
Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce plans for our 2017 annual conference, entitled: “Transparency in Health and Health Care: Legal and Ethical Possibilities and Limits.”

Transparency is a relatively new concept to the world of health and health care, considering that just a few short decades ago we were still in the throes of a “doctor-knows-best” model. Today, however, transparency is found on almost every short list of solutions to a variety of health policy problems, ranging from conflicts of interest to rising drug costs to promoting efficient use of health care resources, and more. Doctors are now expected to be transparent about patient diagnoses and treatment options, hospitals are expected to be transparent about error rates, insurers about policy limitations, companies about prices, researchers about data, and policymakers about priorities and rationales for health policy intervention. But a number of important legal and ethical questions remain. For example, what exactly does transparency mean in the context of health, who has a responsibility to be transparent and to whom, what legal mechanisms are there to promote transparency, and what legal protections are needed for things like privacy, intellectual property, and the like?  More specifically, when can transparency improve health and health care, and when is it likely to be nothing more than platitude?

This conference, and anticipated edited volume, will aim to: (1) identify the various thematic roles transparency has been called on to play in American health policy, and why it has emerged in these spaces; (2) understand when, where, how, and why transparency may be a useful policy tool in relation to health and health care, what it can realistically be expected to achieve, and when it is unlikely to be successful, including limits on how patients and consumers utilize information even when we have transparency; (3) assess the legal and ethical issues raised by transparency in health and health care, including obstacles and opportunities; (4) learn from comparative examples of transparency, both in other sectors and outside the United States.  In sum, we hope to reach better understandings of this health policy buzzword so that transparency can be utilized as a solution to pressing health policy issues where appropriate, while recognizing its true limitations.

Call for Abstracts

We welcome submissions on both the broad conceptual questions described above and more specific policy issues, including: Read More

Honing the Emerging Right to Stop Eating and Drinking

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By Norman L. Cantor

A stricken medical patient has a well-established right to reject life-extending medical interventions.  A person afflicted with pulmonary disease is entitled to reject a respirator, a person with kidney dysfunction can reject dialysis, and a person with a swallowing disorder can reject artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH).  State and federal courts uniformly invoke competent patients’ interests in self-determination and bodily integrity to uphold a patient’s prerogative to shape their own medical course.  The patient’s right extends not just to intrusive machinery, but also to simplistic, non-burdensome medical intrusions like an I.V. tube or a blood transfusion.

Some patients facing fatal or seriously degenerative conditions seek to hasten their demise by voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) before the stage of decline when they are dependent on life-sustaining medical intervention.  They see SED as a way to shorten their ordeal by precipitating death by dehydration within 14 days while receiving mild palliative intervention to foreclose distress before slipping into a terminal coma. The SED process entails days of lingering incapacity and is a distasteful prospect for some patients.  But it is regarded by other patients as a relatively quick, peaceful, and humane way of ending a mortal struggle now deemed to be intolerably arduous.

Numerous medico-legal commentators, myself included,[1] have asserted that a stricken patient has “a right” to VSED.   These commentators associate a patient’s decision to cease nutrition and hydration with the established constitutional right to reject life-sustaining medical intervention.  They note that the fasting person is invoking bodily integrity – precluding any feeding spoon from penetrating their mouth or nutritional tube from being inserted into their body – as well as autonomy in shaping a response to a serious affliction.   They also observe that the proffered succor (in the form of forced feeding or artificial nutrition) demands medically skilled intervention generally subject to a competent patient’s control.

The formal legal authority is thin.  Commentators point to several lower court decisions where judges refused to authorize medical override of a fasting patient.  No high level judicial body has spoken to the precise issue. Read More

The Competing Identities of Neuroethics

bradsegal Leave a comment

By Brad Segal

This past week week I attended the International Neuroethics Society’s (INS) annual conference in San Diego, California. Neuroethics is multidisciplinary field that grapples with the implications of neuroscience for—and from—medicine, law, philosophy, and the social sciences. One of the many excellent panels brought together scholars from each of these four disciplines to discuss the diverse approaches to the field. The panel featured; Paul Appelbaum, a Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University; Tom Buller, Chair of philosophy at Illinois State University; Jennifer Chandler, Professor of law at the University of Ottawa, and; Ilina Singh, Professor of Neuroscience & Society at the University of Oxford.

The panel started by considering the importance of the “competing identities” present in the field of neuroethics. As moderator Eric Racine explained, right from the start, even the term ‘neuroethics’ suggests a tension. Consider the variety of research methodologies employed in the field. For instance, a scholar trained in philosophy might approach neuroscience from a conceptual and purely analytical basis, and yet a social scientist might research the same question by collecting empirical interview data. The interplay between empirical and theoretical work was a theme that defined the discussion.

A psychiatrist by training, Dr. Applebaum spoke on the medical approach to the field. He argued that a focus on ethical issues in clinical psychiatry and neurology should be viewed as a part (but only a part) of neuroethics. Furthermore, medicine’s empirical approach to neuroethics is one (but not the only) way to advance thinking on neuroethical issues. Read More