Govind persad at the podium

When All You Have is a DALY, Everything Looks Like Disease

Recently the Petrie-Flom Center’s annual conference brought together medical experts, bioethics scholars, and disability advocates to rethink how medical systems and public health policies can engage with disability.

During the many fascinating panels at “Beyond Disadvantage: Disability, Law, and Bioethics” one idea that sparked some debate was whether we should use quality/disability adjusted life years (QALY/DALY) to set priorities for who gets access to healthcare resources. Prof. Govind Persad, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins and blogger for Bill of Health, suggested in his presentation that we should dramatically reduce the role of such utilitarian calculations in priority setting, instead focusing on the genesis of the disadvantage.

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protest sign at supreme court

Misinformed Consent: How the Supreme Court Bolsters Paternalistic Medicine

The Supreme Court this week struck down California’s Reproductive FACT Act in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, which required Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC) to inform their prospects that they are not medical providers and post a sign informing them that the state provides free or low cost access to prenatal and preventative medicine, including abortion.

The law was passed in reaction to what California saw as deceptive and harmful tactics employed by the CPCs in order to mislead women seeking abortions to come to them instead. These clinics are often funded by the state and federal government. While many of these centers offer some medical services, importantly, they are not healthcare providers and usually do not have a doctor on the premises. This means that not only are the women who go to them at risk of receiving faulty care, the CPCs do not face the same consequences a doctor would for misleading their patients.

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