Announcements - Bill of Health

Journal of Law and the Biosciences Continues to Have an Impact

July 22, 2020July 21, 2020 Chloe Reichel Leave a comment

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of the biosciences in our world, as well as the legal, ethical, and regulatory choices that shape the development and implementation of innovations from the biosciences.

The Journal of Law and the Biosciences (JLB) offers high-quality, open-access scholarship at the intersection of the biosciences and law as the first fully open-access, peer-reviewed, legal journal to focus on these issues.

Recently, the Journal of Law and the Biosciences received an updated impact factor of 2.275, highlighting its relevance and influence in law, medicine, and ethics. JLB ranks 25^th out of 154 law journals, second of sixteen legal medicine journals, and third out of sixteen medical ethics journals.

Call for Abstracts: Looking Forward to a Post-Pandemic Landscape

July 13, 2020July 13, 2020 Carmel Shachar Leave a comment

By Carmel Shachar and Katie Kraschel

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted virtually every facet of day-to-day life.

This disruption has forced us to examine baseline choices and assumptions about how to deliver health care, participate in public discourse, provide access to education, and support the workforce. This “great revision” will continue in several iterative stages: an immediate response to the crisis, a modulation as the pandemic continues, and a resolution into a “new normal.”

The Petrie-Flom Center and the Solomon Center for Health Law Policy are interested in tracking when crisis settles into the new normal and articulating how public policy and law should respond to that evolution.

Announcing The Journal of Philosophy of Disability

June 18, 2020June 18, 2020 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

The Journal of Philosophy of Disability (JPD) is a new journal devoted to the philosophical study of disability.

Disability is central to human life. As the slogan from disability studies goes: “disability is everywhere, once you know how to look for it.” After a steady stream of scholarship from the 1990s onward, work in the field of philosophy of disability has expanded exponentially. Despite this explosion, there has never been a peer-reviewed journal devoted to scholarship in the field of philosophy of disability. Until now.

Bill of Health is Looking to Amplify BIPOC Voices

June 11, 2020June 11, 2020 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Bill of Health strongly affirms that black lives and black voices matter, and we want to do more to feature and amplify the work of BIPOC scholars and students.

Accordingly, we are looking for new, regular contributors to Bill of Health, as well as guest bloggers. Regular contributors generally publish between five and 12 posts per year. Guest bloggers typically contribute two to five posts over the course of a one-month period. We welcome news, commentary, and scholarship in the fields of health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics. Posts are typically 750 words in length.

If you are interested in becoming a regular contributor or guest blogger, please email editor-in-chief Chloe Reichel.

Special Pandemic Issue of the Journal of Law and the Biosciences

June 9, 2020June 9, 2020 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

On March 24, 2020, the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, jointly run by Duke University, Harvard University Law School, and Stanford University, put out a call for essays and articles on governance in a time of pandemic. Between April 22 and May 28, it published 25 articles, all of which are available at the Journal’s website free of charge. We expect that more than 20 additional pieces will join them over the next month or so. The following is a regularly updated list, organized by date and time of publication, of what has been published in that special issue to date.

New Virtual Issue of Journal of Law and the Biosciences: Editors’ Choice 2020

April 23, 2020April 21, 2020 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

In this virtual issue from Journal of Law and the Biosciences, we present 17 informative articles, published in 2017-2019, hand-picked by the journal’s three Editors-in-Chief: Nita Farahany from Duke University, Hank Greely from Stanford University, and Glenn Cohen from Harvard Law School.

This specially curated article collection examines a range of matters focusing on the intersection of law and the biosciences, including whether a complete ban on surrogacy is compatible with the American Convention on Human Rights, what role should law play when genetic privacy is concerned, or what opportunities and challenges there are for forensic psychiatry regarding brain-based mind reading.

In selecting articles for this virtual issue, the Editorial Board aims to emphasize the high-quality studies published in Journal of Law and the Biosciences and hopes these will stimulate further research in this new important field.

Check out the full collection!

New COVID-19 Resources from the Petrie-Flom Center

April 21, 2020April 20, 2020 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised many health law, policy, and bioethical questions. The Petrie-Flom Center is working hard to address many of the issues raised by the pandemic through our scholarship, events, and commentary in the news.

In the interest of sharing this knowledge, the Petrie-Flom Center has collected these resources on a new page on our website. In addition to a list of featured resources is a broader collection of our work on COVID-19. The page is dynamic and frequently updated. Check it out here.

Call for Submissions: Journal of Law and Biosciences, “Law and Ethics in the Time of a Global Pandemic”

March 26, 2020March 26, 2020 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

The Journal of Law and the Biosciences (JLB) is soliciting essays, commentaries, or short articles for a special issue on “Law and Ethics in the Time of a Global Pandemic.” For this issue we especially encourage shorter pieces, of roughly 1500 to 5000 words. If any particular aspect of how this pandemic will affect some part of the law—from lease terms to courtroom procedures to constitutional questions about mandatory testing—intrigues you, write it up and send it in.

Illustration of four people helping each other climb progressively taller stacks of books

What’s Missing From Biotech Graduate Education? With Free Course, RA Capital Attempts to Fill the Gaps

January 9, 2020January 9, 2020 Jessica Sagers Leave a comment

By Jessica Sagers

As a PhD student in the life sciences at Harvard, I attended almost every career seminar that came through my inbox. I had no idea what I wanted to do after finishing my research doctorate, but I was certain that it wasn’t more cell culture.

The walls of my academic bubble were so thick that even as a budding cell biologist, I’d managed to hear almost nothing about Boston’s booming biotech industry. “Going into industry” was regarded as an “alternative career,” to the point where it sounded like taking a job outside of academia was tantamount to abandoning science. Besides, all my training had been in basic science. The coursework I’d excelled in, from neurobiology to biophysics, did not equip me to translate what I’d learned to the business world.

During my final PhD year, curiosity about the biotech sector drove me to accept an internship at RA Capital Management, a life science-focused investment firm in Boston. Dr. Peter Kolchinsky (Harvard Program in Virology, ’01), Founder and Managing Partner of RA Capital, brought me and a group of fellow PhD students on board to help achieve his vision of providing more pragmatic, focused training to scientists and professionals interested in working in biotechnology. Together, we designed a short, advanced course on the business of biotech designed to fit the practical needs of late-stage graduate students and early-career professionals.

Photograph of a green cow statue in a field

Exploring the Future of Meat: Academy of Food Law & Policy 2nd Annual Conference at Georgia State University, Dec. 10, 2019

September 11, 2019September 11, 2019 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Nicole Negowetti

Sustainably feeding a growing population with healthy diets is a pressing global challenge. The role of meat in such diets is a deeply contentious issue that has public health, animal welfare, food systems, farming, and environmental experts and advocates weighing in on the issue. As we learn more about the impacts of meat production and consumption on human and environmental health and animal welfare, meat consumption is changing. In North America, eaters are heeding recommendations to reduce, replace, or eliminate meat in their diets; however, global meat production and consumption continues to rise.

Category: Announcements