Save The Date! 2/22/18: The Jaharis Symposium on Health Law and Intellectual Property

On February 22, 2018, join DePaul University, located in downtown Chicago, for The Jaharis Symposium on Health Law and Intellectual Property: Technological and Emergency Responses to Pandemic Diseases.

Hosted by DePaul University’s Mary and Michael Jaharis Health Law Institute and the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Information Technology (CIPLIT®), this one day conference will focus on “best practices” in response to emerging pandemic diseases.

Connect with keynote speakers Lawrence Gostin–University Professor and Faculty Director, O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University– and Richard Wilder–Associate General Counsel, Global Health Program, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  They will be joined by other esteemed panelists during this timely and important discussion.

@DepaulHealthLaw

Dementia and Democracy: America’s Aging Judges and Politicians

Dementia and Democracy: America’s Aging Judges and Politicians
November 15, 2017 12:00 PM
Pound Hall, Room 102
Harvard Law School, 1563 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

Our judiciary and our elected officials are getting old. Five of the nine Supreme Court Justices are 67 or older, with two over age 80. The President is 71, the Senate Majority Leader is 75, and the House Minority Leader is 77. Does the public have a right to know whether these officials have been screened for dementia? If the individuals don’t self-report their dementia status, should experts continue to adhere to the “Goldwater Rule” and refrain from offering an armchair diagnosis? As the nation reflects on its midterm elections, and prepares for the 2020 election cycle, these questions are timely and challenging.

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REGISTER NOW (12/12)! Sixth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review

The Sixth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review symposium will feature leading experts discussing major developments during 2017 and what to watch out for in 2018. The discussion at this day-long event will cover hot topics in such areas as health policy under the new administration, regulatory issues in clinical research, law at the end-of-life, patient rights and advocacy, pharmaceutical policy, reproductive health, and public health law.

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TODAY, 11/13 at 5 PM: Health Law Workshop with Allison Hoffman

November 13, 2017 5-7 PM
Hauser Hall, Room 104
Harvard Law School, 1575 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA

Presentation: “Health Care’s Market Bureaucracy”

To request a copy of the paper in preparation for the workshop, please contact Jennifer Minnich at jminnich@law.harvard.edu.

Allison K. Hoffman joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Law School in fall 2017. Hoffman’s research examines the role of regulation and the welfare state in promoting health, as well as how regulation affects conceptions of risk and responsibility. Her recent work includes “Reimagining the Risk of Long Term Care” in the Yale Journal of Health Policy Law and Ethics—an article that argues for a more capacious vision of how we think about long-term care risk—and the Oxford Handbook of U.S. Health Law (2017), a volume co-edited with I. Glenn Cohen and William M. Sage. She also contributed a chapter to this volume entitled “What Health Reform Reveals about Health Law,” which explores the Affordable Care Act as a window into the idiosyncrasies of U.S. health care law and the values that have shaped this field. Her work and commentary has been featured in top media outlets, including the New York Times, The Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Morningstar, CNBC, the New York Daily News, Marketplace by American Public Media, Jotwell, and Penn Law’s Regulatory Review (formerly RegBlog).

Hoffman received her AB summa cum laude from Dartmouth College and her JD from Yale Law School. After graduating from law school, she practiced law at Ropes & Gray LLP, where she focused on health care regulation. Previously, she provided strategic advice to corporations and nonprofit organizations as a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group and The Bridgespan Group. Prior to joining the Penn faculty, Hoffman was a faculty member at UCLA Law School. She was previously an Academic Fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

Vinay Prasad on ‘The Week in Health Law’ Podcast

By Nicolas Terry and Frank Pasquale

Subscribe to TWIHL here!

Renowned hematologist-oncologist, researcher, and writer Vinay Prasad joins us to discuss his views on modern clinical and research practice. A prolific scholar, Prasad has been upending conventional wisdom for years. We discuss the effectiveness (or not) of cancer screening, a more realistic take on the cancer moonshot, and continual conflicts of interest issues in medicine. Be sure to follow Vinay on Twitter @VinayPrasad82.

Our lightning round focused on work requirements for Medicaid (and 1115 waivers in general), scoring the individual mandate, the alchemy of precious metal tiers in an age of Trump, and why the shopping metaphor is so misguided in health care.

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 Apple Podcasts, listen at Stitcher Radio Tunein, or 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.

Housing Equity Week in Review

Here’s the latest news from housing law and equity, for the week of November 6-10, 2017:

  • The Public Health Institute released a study that calculates the number of children with lead poisoning in the United States.
  • A new law in Seattle will prevent landlords from screening tenants based on their criminal history, via The Regulatory Review.
  • “It’s time to stop ignoring our crumbling housing code enforcement” — coverage of APHA2017 sessions on housing code enforcement, featuring CPHLR Director Scott Burris and the Five Essential Public Health Law Services Framework developed in collaboration with ChangeLab Solutions and the Network for Public Health Law, via Public Health Newswire.
  • San Jose has a new plan to get downtown landlords to clean up their vacant storefronts using a pilot program that would create a registry of vacant buildings and fine property owners who are neglecting their properties, via NextCity.
  • Civil rights groups are fighting the suspension of a HUD rule they say helps low-income families move to better neighborhoods, via CityLab.
  • Texans voted to loosen some of the tightest home lending restrictions in the country. via Governing.

Bioethics in Islam: Principles, Perspectives, Comparisons

An important questions in Islam, recurrent across time and space, is whether Islamic political theory recognizes rights claims against the state as distinct from rights claims against other members of the community. This continues to be an important subject today, intersecting the fields of law, religion, and moral philosophy. The classical tradition is divided on the matter, with the legal theory of the Shafi’i school of jurisprudence saying that rights are to be accorded viareligious authority, while the Hanafi school emphasized the universality of the notion of human inviolability (dhimma)—and the innate rights that derive from it—as God-given, universal, and applicable to all societies from the beginning of time.

Whereas in Western law there is generally a separation between law and ethics, in the Islamic tradition, there is more of a dialectical tension between the two: Where religious inwardness is more highly developed, attitude and intention are weighed more heavily, whereas in its absence however formalism and legalism are advanced as the ethical ideal.

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AI Citizen Sophia and Legal Status

By Gali Katznelson

Two weeks ago, Sophia, a robot built by Hanson Robotics, was ostensibly granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia. Sophia, an artificially intelligent (AI) robot modelled after Audrey Hepburn, appeared on stage at the Future Investment Initiative Conference in Riyadh to speak to CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, thanking the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for naming her the first robot citizen of any country. Details of this citizenship have yet to be disclosed, raising suspicions that this announcement was a publicity stunt. Stunt or not, this event raises a question about the future of robots within ethical and legal frameworks: as robots come to acquire more and more of the qualities of human personhood, should their rights be recognized and protected?

Looking at a 2016 report passed by the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs can provide some insight. The report questions whether robots “should be regarded as natural persons, legal persons, animals or objects – or whether a new category should be created.” I will discuss each of these categories in turn, in an attempt to position Sophia’s current and future capabilities within a legal framework of personhood.

If Sophia’s natural personhood were recognized in the United States, she would be entitled to, among others, freedom of expression, freedom to worship, the right to a prompt, fair trial by jury, and the natural rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” If she were granted citizenship, as is any person born in the United States or who becomes a citizen through the naturalization process, Sophia would have additional rights such as the right to vote in elections for public officials, the right to apply for federal employment requiring U.S. citizenship, and the right to run for office. With these rights would come responsibilities: to support and defend the constitution, to stay informed of issues affecting one’s community, to participate in the democratic process, to respect and obey the laws, to respect the rights, beliefs and opinions of others, to participate in the community, to pay income and other taxes, to serve on jury when called, and to defend the country should the need arise. In other words, if recognized as a person, or, more specifically, as a person capable of obtaining American citizenship, Sophia could have the same rights as any other American, lining up at the polls to vote, or even potentially becoming president. Read More

Monthly Round-Up of What to Read on Pharma Law and Policy

By Ameet Sarpatwari, Michael S. Sinha, and Aaron S. Kesselheim

Each month, members of the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) review the peer-reviewed medical literature to identify interesting empirical studies, policy analyses, and editorials on health law and policy issues relevant to current or potential future work in the Division.

Below are the abstracts/summaries for papers identified from the month of October. The selections feature topics ranging from the trajectories of injectable cancer drug costs after launch in the United States, to the FDA Unapproved Drugs Initiative, to registries supporting new drug applications. A full posting of abstracts/summaries of these articles may be found on our website.

  1. Gordon N, Stemmer SM, Greenberg D, Goldstein DA. Trajectories of Injectable Cancer Drug Costs After Launch in the United States. J Clin Oncol. 2017 Oct 10. [Epud ahead of print]
  2. Gupta R, Dhruva SS, Fox ER, Ross JS. The FDA Unapproved Drugs Initiative: An Observational Study of the Consequences for Drug Prices and Shortages in the United States. J Manag Care Spec Pharm. 2017 Oct;23(10):1066-1076.
  3. Jonker CJ, van der Berg HM, Kwa MSG, Hoes AW, Mol PGM. Registries supporting new drug applications. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2017 Oct 6.
  4. Sarpatwari A, Choudhry NK. Recalibrating Privacy Protections to Promote Patient Engagement. N Engl J Med. 2017 Oct 19;377(16):1509-1511.

TOMORROW, 11/9! Book Launch: Specimen Science – Ethics and Policy Implications

Book Launch: Specimen Science: Ethics and Policy Implications
November 9, 2017 12:00 PM
Countway Library, Lahey Room
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA

In September 2017, MIT Press will publish Specimen Science: Ethics and Policy Implications, co-edited by Holly Fernandez Lynch (outgoing Petrie-Flom Executive Director), Barbara Bierer, I. Glenn Cohen (Faculty Director), and Suzanne M. Rivera. This edited volume stems from a conference in 2015 that brought together leading experts to address key ethical and policy issues raised by genetics and other research involving human biological materials, covering the entire trajectory from specimen source to new discovery.  The conference was a collaboration between The Center for Child Health and Policy at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital; the Petrie-Flom Center  for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School; the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center of Harvard and Brigham and Women’s Hospital; and Harvard Catalyst | The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center. It was supported by funding from the National Human Genome Research Institute and the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund at Harvard University.

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