Category: Environment

small person standing with megaphone speaking toward an ear with a red "x" over it.

Beyond Vulnerability: Disability, Epistemic Agency, and Climate Action

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Sarah Bell

When considered in climate policy, disabled people are typically homogenized as climate “victims;” a framing that does little to address the social or political conditions that create these circumstances or to recognize the potential contributions of disabled people as knowledgeable agents of change.

This piece highlights the failure to recognize the knowledges of disabled people as a form of epistemic injustice, whereby the capacity of disabled people as knowers or “epistemic agents” that produce, use and/or transmit knowledge is repeatedly misrecognized or undermined.

Read More

Gas stove burner with burning gas. Sale and purchase of gas fuel.

The Public Health Case Against Gas Appliances

Jennifer Oliva Leave a comment

By Heather Payne and Jennifer D. Oliva

Gas appliances pose a grave danger to tenant health and safety.

In a forthcoming article, we argue that the mere presence of natural gas appliances in the home renders a dwelling uninhabitable due to their potential health harms. We further contend that tenants should invoke the implied warranty of habitability to eliminate the continued exposure to natural gas appliance-generated indoor air pollutants.

Read More

U.S. Supreme Court interior.

How the Supreme Court’s Judicial Activism Compromises Public Health

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By John Culhane

The United States Supreme Court poses a serious threat to public health, but not because the majority of the justices are necessarily opposed to laws and policies designed to protect and further public health and safety. The problem, rather, is the justices’ commitment to other projects that they deem more central to their anti-administration and pro-religion ideology. Nowhere has this commitment been more apparent than during the ongoing COVID pandemic, but the court’s activism isn’t limited to that serious public health problem.

Read More

simple black childish hand drawing lines lightbulbs on yellow background.

Failures of Imagination in Public Health Policy

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Daniel Swartzman

If public health is to prosper, we will need to overcome the after-effects of several failures of imagination.

  • Failing to recognize the threat to liberal democracy from the last 50 years of coordinated conservative political and policy actions.
  • Failing to use litigation against inadequate public health actions, as did the early civil rights and environmental movements.
  • Failing to anticipate litigation that challenges our efforts, such as with the ACA or the upcoming attempt to “codify Roe v. Wade.”
  • Failing to demand moral leadership of governmental actors.
  • Failing to make political action and advocacy an integral part of professional education in public health.

Read More

wildfire; burning pine forest in the smoke and flames.

Call for Submissions – Symposium on Disability and Climate Change

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, the Harvard Law School Project on Disability (HPOD), and the Disability-Inclusive Climate Action Research Programme (DICARP) at McGill Law Faculty are pleased to announce a call for submissions for the following digital symposium hosted by Bill of Health:

BEYOND VULNERABILITY: THE RIGHTS AND AGENCY OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IN THE CLIMATE CRISIS

Read More

Buenos Aires, Argentina – August 31, 2017: Horizontal view of some waste collector machines over Matanza River (also known as Riachuelo at its mouth in River Plate), La Boca neighborhood.

Searching for Environmental Justice in Argentina: Revisiting the Reality of the Matanza-Riachuelo River Basin Case after Fifteen Years

Alicia Ely Yamin Leave a comment

By Alicia Ely Yamin and María Natalia Echegoyemberry

The first thing that strikes you when you arrive in Argentina’s Villa Inflamable (literally “Inflammable Slum”) is the noxious sulfur smell of the air that mixes with other acrid chemicals, which makes it difficult to breathe deeply. When a breeze picks up, the sands that have been used to extract contaminated water from the nearby Riachuelo, one of the ten most highly contaminated rivers in the world, rain down on everyone, filling eyes and lungs with toxic particulate matter.

As petrochemical tanker trucks parade through nearby paved streets, the unpaved lanes of Villa Inflamable alternate between toxic dust blowing through the air on dry days to flooding raw sewage on rainy ones. Everyone knows someone who died of cancer, or had pregnancy complications and children with birth defects. More than 600 children have been born and are growing up exposed to highly carcinogenic chemicals, such as benzene and toluene.

Read More

Sign at train station in Berlin that describes free support for pet owners coming from Ukraine.

Ethical Challenges Associated with the Protection of Pets in War

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment
(Photo: Sign at the central train station in Berlin (Berlin Hauptbahnhof) that offers free support for pet owners coming from Ukraine. Courtesy of Kristin Sandvik.)

By Kristin Bergtora Sandvik

Introduction

The care for animals rapidly became a part of the humanitarian narrative of the attack on Ukraine.

There are countless accounts of the efforts of activists, shelters and zoo staff to keep animals alive, as well as underground operations to get them to safety. And, as Ukrainians flee for their lives, they are frequently accompanied by their pets.

EU initiatives and advocacy efforts by animal rights groups pushed receiving countries to modify entrance requirements, waive fees, provide veterinary services, and shorten or eliminate quarantine times. The EU announced a special derogation in Regulation 2013/576, allowing the import of Ukrainian refugee pets without meeting standard requirements. Many governments have welcomed Ukrainian pets with or without their owners, and without documentation, rabies vaccine, and/or microchip.

Humanitarian action is typically human centric; this broad societal acceptance of pets as legitimate refugee companions, and the attendant rapid regulatory accommodations, are unique developments. In this blog, I draw on perspectives from disaster studies, international humanitarian law (IHL), refugee studies, and animal studies to articulate a set of ethical dilemmas around classification and policymaking that arise when pets are recognized as a humanitarian protection problem.

Read More

Global connections concept illustration.

21st Century Lawmaking in an Interdependent World

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Caroline E. Foster

A new pandemic instrument should explicitly embrace the three emerging global regulatory standards of due diligence, due regard, and regulatory coherence.

These standards sit at the interface between national and international law to help functionally align the two in ways that will protect and advance shared and competing interests in an interdependent world.

The standards require nations to exercise their regulatory power in certain ways, including demonstrating (i) due regard for the international legal rights and interests of others, (ii) due diligence in the prevention of harm to other States, and (iii) regulatory coherence between governmental measures and their objectives. These international law standards are already implicit in and given effect by the operation of WHO’s current International Health Regulations (IHR) of 2005.

As we develop new pandemic instruments, their presence should be made increasingly explicit. Giving a stronger profile to the standards will help generate new political impetus and new legal bases for implementation of world health law, and fit it to 21st century application.

Read More

Close up of a mosquito sucking blood on human skin. This mosquito is a carrier of Malaria, Encephalitis, Dengue and Zika virus.

Responsibly Developing Gene Drives: The GeneConvene Global Collaborative

James Toomey Leave a comment

By James Toomey

Researchers believe that gene drives could eliminate vector-borne diseases such as malaria, by modifying mosquito species or eradicating those that carry disease, kill off invasive species, and combat the growing problem of pesticide resistance.

A gene drive is a technique for genetically modifying entire species of wild organisms. Genetically modified individuals of the species are released into the wild, so as to raise the probability that a particular gene will be passed onto the species’ progeny via reproduction.

Over the course of many generations, the gene — even if detrimental — can spread to an entire population.

But as of now, this is all hypothetical. No gene drive has been tested in the wild, and many people are skeptical that they should ever be used.

The GeneConvene Global Collaborative, a project of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, was started this past July to promote the responsible development and regulation of gene drive technologies. It brings together researchers, regulators and stakeholders around the world to develop best practices for gene drive research and implementation.

Because of my prior writing on this topic, I participated in GeneConvene’s fall webinar series and spoke with scientists there about the project. Read More

Black and white photo of a line of dominoes toppling over

The (Possible) “Dark Side” of Gene Editing Technologies

Shelly Simana Leave a comment

By Shelly Simana

Gene editing technologies enable people to directly change their DNA sequence by adding, removing, or replacing DNA bases. Today, for the first time, as Jennifer Doudna and Samuel Sternberg announced in their book, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution, people “possess the ability to edit not only the DNA of every living human but also the DNA of future generations” (p. xvi). The emergence of new gene editing tools, such as CRISPR-Cas9, prime editing, and dubbed SATI, has led to momentous advances in biotechnology as the new tools make gene editing faster, easier, less expensive, and more precise than ever before.

While gene editing technologies offer great promise, they may also introduce risks with far-reaching consequences. This post focuses on the possible “dark side” of gene editing technologies and addresses some threats that the technologies might pose to human lives. While nowadays some of those risks would be deemed “science fiction,” they should be in the back of our minds as we ponder the potential impact of gene editing technologies.

Gene Editing as a Weapon of Mass Destruction Read More