Introducing Blogger Tara Sklar

The Petrie-Flom Center is pleased to welcome Tara Sklar to Bill of Health as our newest contributor!

Tara is a Professor of Health Law and Director of the Graduate Health Sciences Programs at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. She also holds an appointment as a Health Law Fellow in the Law and Public Health Group at the University of Melbourne, School of Population and Global Health. Prior to this she was the Founding Director of Aging Programs at the University of Melbourne, and in 2016 was awarded University of Melbourne’s Teaching Excellence in Innovation Award. She has particular interests in laws and regulations that impact population well-being, with a focus on older adults. Read More

Introducing Blogger Oliver Kim

The Petrie-Flom Center is pleased to welcome Oliver Kim to the Bill of Health as our newest contributor!

Oliver is an adjunct professor with the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and a policy consultant in Washington, DC. He has over fifteen years of federal and state legislative and policy experience, including serving for eight years as a senior advisor to Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and two as deputy director for the Special Committee on Aging under Chairman Bill Nelson (D-FL). He was selected for the Woodrow Wilson foreign policy fellowship, the AcademyHealth Health Policy in Action award, the Hartford Foundation Change AGEnt program, and the American Council of Young Political Leaders’ international exchange program. He received his BA from Indiana University, JD from University of Minnesota, and LLM from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Representative publications:

  • Lois Magner and Oliver Kim. A History of Medicine (2018, 3rd ed.).
  • Oliver Kim, “Ebbs and Flows: Issues in Cross-Border Exchange and Regulation of Health Information,” 26 Annals of Health Law 39 (Winter 2017).
  • Oliver Kim, “Trying and dying: Are some wishes at the end of life better?” 7 Rutgers Journal of Bioethics 37 (Spring 2016).
  • Oliver Kim, “When Things Fall Apart: Liabilities and limitations of compacts between state and tribal governments,” 26 Hamline Law Review 49 (2003).
  • Oliver Kim, “The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act: On the Fast Track to National Harmony or Constitutional Chaos?” 84 Minnesota Law Review 223 (1999).

Welcome, Oliver!

Introducing Blogger Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon 

The Petrie-Flom Center is pleased to welcome Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon to the Bill of Health as our newest contributor!

Jean-Christophe is a Visiting Researcher at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School,  a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Postdoctoral Fellow, and a Fellow at the Health Law Institute at Dalhousie University.

A bioethicist by training, he is particularly interested in the marketing of health products and the resulting moral responsibility of regulators and industries. While his undergraduate studies in physics led him to pure science, his interest in the field of health and bioethics grew during his experiences in the pharmaceutical industry, where he worked for 6 years in clinical research and regulatory affairs, as well as in business intelligence, sales, and marketing.

His research also focuses on patient engagement in research by exploring ethical and logistical dimensions as well as providing guidance for capacity development of future researchers. Jean-Christophe is also interested in how researchers can engage the general public to reflect on the most pressing ethical issues of our time, including by mingling arts and bioethics to advance these reflections in the public space. He will be the new Managing Editor of the Journal of Law and the Biosciences beginning January 2, 2018.

Welcome, Jean-Christophe!

Introducing New Blogger Mason Marks 

Mason Marks is joining Bill of Health as a regular contributor.

Mason is a Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project. His research focuses on the application of artificial intelligence to clinical decision making in healthcare. He is particularly interested in the regulation of machine learning and obstacles to its adoption by the medical community. His secondary interests include data privacy and the regulation of emerging technologies such as 3D-bioprinting, surgical robotics, and genome editing.

Mason received his J.D. from Vanderbilt Law School. He is a member of the California Bar and practices intellectual property law in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has represented clients in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical device industries. Prior to law school, he received his M.D. from Tufts University and his B.A. in biology from Amherst College.

Representative Publications:  Read More

Introducing New Blogger Leslie Griffin

We are pleased to introduce our newest contributor, Leslie Griffin, to Bill of Health.

Dr. Leslie C. Griffin is the William S. Boyd Professor of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law. She holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Yale University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. She is author of the Foundation Press casebook, Practicing Bioethics Law (2015), which was co-authored with Joan H. Krause, Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, and Bill of Health blogger. Before becoming a law professor, Professor Griffin clerked for the Honorable Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and was an assistant counsel in the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates professional misconduct by federal prosecutors. Before joining the UNLV faculty, Professor Griffin held the Larry & Joanne Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics at the University of Houston Law Center and was a tenured member of the faculty at the Santa Clara University School of Law.

Representative Publications Read More

Introducing New Blogger Anthony W. Orlando

Anthony W. Orlando is joining Bill of Health as a regular contributor.

Anthony is an Assistant Lecturer in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he is completing his PhD in Public Policy and Management. He also contributes to the Huffington Post. He hosts the podcast “Our American Discourse,” sponsored by the USC Bedrosian Center. He received his bachelor’s degree in economics from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a master’s in economic history from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is a member of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics.

Representative publications:

Please join us in welcoming Anthony!

Introducing the 2017-2018 Petrie-Flom Student Fellows

The Petrie-Flom Center is pleased to welcome our new 2017-2018 Student Fellows. In the coming year, each fellow will pursue independent scholarly projects related to health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics under the mentorship of Center faculty and fellows. They will also be regular contributors here at Bill of Health on issues related to their research.

Clíodhna Ní Chéileachair is an LL.M student from Ireland at Harvard Law School, and holds a BCL degree in Law and Philosophy from University College Dublin. Prior to her masters, she worked as a teaching assistant in criminal law, company law and the philosophy of law in University College Dublin and as a paralegal in a corporate firm, with a focus on healthcare litigation and employment law. Her primary research interests are in the intersection of feminist legal theory and health law, ethics and the philosophy of law, particularly in relation to questions of consent and objectivity. For her Fellowship project, Clíodhna will study the manner in which health law and policy intersects with issues of personhood and autonomy in the context of pregnancy.

Aobo Dong is an M.T.S. candidate in Religion, Politics, and Ethics at the Harvard Divinity School. He graduated from Wesleyan University, where he majored in Social Studies and examined the alliance between American evangelicals and the GOP in his honors thesis. At Harvard, his research interests have shifted toward reconciling potential conflicts between religion and the modern human rights discourse, particularly in terms of sexuality, health, and other social-economic rights. He is also a junior fellow at the Science, Religion & Culture (SRC) program. For his Fellowship project, Aobo will investigate the legal and ethical challenges surrounding the fast-expanding healthcare cost-sharing ministries (HCSMs) that provide members with an alternative to traditional insurance models.

Gali Katznelson is a M.Be. candidate at the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Arts & Science at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. Her research interests include the ethics of emerging healthcare technologies. For her Fellowship project, she will focus on physician perceptions of the use and regulations of mobile health applications.

Yusuf Lenfest is an M.T.S. candidate in Islamic Studies at the Harvard Divinity School. He pursued undergraduate and graduate education at the University of Vermont (BA) and the London School of Economics (MSc) in the fields of literature, philosophy, and comparative politics. He is trained as a jurist in the Maliki school of law, in which he is qualified to issue fatwa, and he also completed advanced training in the fields of legal theory and theology under the tutelage of renowned Mauritanian scholar Shaykh Abdallah Bin Bayyah. For his Fellowship project, Yusuf will examine bioethical issues in contemporary Islamic legal and religious thought.

Introducing new blogger Wendy Netter Epstein

Wendy Netter Epstein is joining Bill of Health as a regular contributor.

epstein-hi-res-blogProfessor Epstein is a Visiting Associate Professor at the University Chicago Law School, and an Associate Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Jaharis Health Law Institute at the DePaul University College of Law.  She is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where she was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Recent Developments. Prior to starting her academic career, Professor Epstein was a partner in commercial litigation at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, concentrating on health industry clients.  Professor Epstein’s teaching and research interests focus on health care law and policy, contracts, and commercial law.  Her work takes an interdisciplinary approach, applying both law and economics and behavioral science principles to problems negatively impacting vulnerable parties.  In 2017, Professor Epstein won both the University-wide and law school Excellence in Teaching Awards at DePaul University.

Representative publications:

Welcome, Wendy!

Introducing New Executive Co-Editor and Contributor Carmel Shachar

shachar_peopleCarmel Shachar, the Executive Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, will being joining Bill of Health as both executive co-editor and regular contributor. Carmel’s scholarship focuses on law and health policy, in particular the regulation of access to care for vulnerable individuals, health care anti-discrimination law and policy, and the use of all-payer claims databases in health care research.

Before coming to the Petrie-Flom Center, Carmel was previously a Clinical Instructor on Law at the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School (CHLPI), where she helped lead CHLPI’s access to care and Affordable Care Act implementation work. During her time at CHLPI, Carmel focused on analyzing and translating health policy issues and opportunities for a broad range of audiences, including many federal and state-level health policy coalitions. She also coordinated and led a major multi-state initiative to document discriminatory benefit designs on the health insurance Marketplaces. Carmel previously practiced health care law at Ropes & Gray, LLP in Boston, Massachusetts. Carmel currently serves on the board of the Fishing Partnership Support Services as well as on the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Boston University. Carmel graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was a student fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center, and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

Please join us in welcoming Carmel to Bill of Health!

Introducing the 2016-2017 Petrie-Flom Student Fellows

The Petrie-Flom Center is pleased to welcome our new 2016-2017 Student Fellows. In the coming year, each fellow will pursue independent scholarly projects related to health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics under the mentorship of Center faculty and fellows. They will also be regular contributors here at Bill of Health on issues related to their research.

Sean Finan PhotoSeán Finan is an LLM candidate from Ireland at the Harvard Law School. He recently graduated from the LLB programme at Trinity College, Dublin, where he served as a Senior Editor of the Trinity College Law Review. His research interests include the ethical implications of emerging biotechnologies. For his Fellowship project, he intends to investigate the use of morality tests on patent applications as a means of indirect regulation of research.

Wendy Salkin Square HeadshotWendy Salkin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. Her primary research is in political philosophy, moral philosophy, social philosophy, and philosophy of law. She also works on questions in feminist philosophy and bioethics. She is writing a dissertation on informal political representation under the supervision of Tommie Shelby, T.M. Scanlon, Richard Moran, and Eric Beerbohm. She holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School and a B.A. in Philosophy and Africana Studies from New York University. For her Fellowship project, she will examine new directions in the debate over lifespan extension.

Segal photoBrad Segal is currently a medical student at Harvard Medical School where he is enrolled in a dual MD/Master of Bioethics degree program. Brad received his BA and BS from UC San Diego where he double majored in Philosophy and Physiology/Neuroscience. In his first year at HMS Brad’s paper on the ethics of organ transplantation was awarded the Henry K. Beecher Prize in Medical Ethics. He has also studied the ethical implications of our evolving understanding of the brain, and has published on whether and when individual genetics and neurobiology should mitigate a criminal defendant’s moral culpability. During his Fellowship he will be studying what ‘harm’ means in the medical context.

Thomas Shailin PhotoShailin Thomas is a second year law student in a joint MD/JD program between Harvard Law School and the New York University School of Medicine. He received a B.S. from Yale University, where he studied cognitive neuroscience — exploring the anatomy and physiology behind social phenomena. His interests lie at the intersection of clinical medicine and the legal forces that shape it. Prior to law school, Shailin worked on both the administrative and clinical sides of health care, and as a research associate at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He is currently an affiliate of the Berkman Center and Outreach Editor for the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology. A fervent proponent of privacy and freedom of expression, Shailin has also served on the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut. For his Fellowship project, he will focus on a tort solution for faulty eyewitness testimony procedures.