Petrie-Flom Interns’ Weekly Round-up: October 6 – October 12

By Kathy Wang and Hyeongsu Park
  • Despite protests, Rhode Island instituted a mandate for flu shots for all healthcare workers. This includes doctors, nurses, other employees, and volunteers at hospitals, nursing homes, and health-related organizations.
  • Earlier this week, the FDA announced it would be taking action against thousands of illegal Internet pharmacies. This initiative is targeted towards protecting consumers from potentially unapproved, dangerous drugs or medical products.
  • British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline released its findings on data for drug trials while also pledging to devote more resources towards the discovery of new medicines. This move towards transparency and collaboration is thought to be a response to critics suspicious of secretive pharmaceutical practices.
  • In the midst of a recent meningitis outbreak spread from the use of medical steroids that have left over 130 sickened, lawmakers have calling for increased regulation of the pharmacy industry. Despite this, pharmacies have resisted and argued that regulation will only worsen the industry.
  • After a US government advisory panel in January suggested that research using deliberately modified strands of the bird flu could possibly endanger the public, most research was halted. However, 9 months after this moratorium, the debate continues.
  • On Thursday, the Journal of the American Medical Association published on online guide to the major health care and health policy issues that are shaping discourse in the 2012 election. Included are diagrams and tables representing voter demographics, political views, and economic implications of the different policies.
  • When two stem-cell scientists were announced to share the 2012 Nobel Prize for Medicine this week, some began to question the ethical implications of this award. A Bioedge article probes some of these concerns and finds the scientists should be also honored with a “Nobel Prize for Ethics” for their upstanding handling of contentious bioethical issues.

**And a few more from the editors:

Attention Disorder or Not, Pills to Help in School

This Election, a Stark Choice in Health Care

Pepsi and Coke to Post Calories of Drinks Sold in Vending Machines

Before a Wave of Meningitis, Shots Were Tied to Risks

Oakland Sues U.S. to Prevent Closing of Marijuana Dispensary

Suit Is Filed Over Move to Regulate Circumcision

Redefining Medicine With Apps and iPads

The Ups and Downs of Electronic Medical Records

Petrie-Flom Interns’ Weekly Round-up: September 29 – October 5

By Hyeongsu Park and Kathy Wang

  • On October 1, under the Affordable Care Act, Medicare started fining hospitals that have too many patients readmitted within 30 days of their discharge because of complications. A Seattle Times article covers this news.
  • On September 28, the Food and Drug Administration launched a national campaign, called BeSafeRx, to alert the public to the danger of internet pharmacies. A USA Today article reports the news in detail.
  • The Montana Supreme Court held that state restrictions on medical marijuana access and sales do not violate patients’ rights to pursue health care under the state constitution, reversing a district court opinion that blocked enforcement of new regulations on medical marijuana.
  • Ethics & Health Law News introduces Nicolas Terry‘s article about the threats to health privacy posed by recent development in data collection and processing. Terry suggests incremental revision the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to regulate the collection and processing of health data. The article can be found here.
  • On September 25, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that parents whose children are harmed or killed by allegedly defective vaccines can’t sue the manufacturers for damages and must instead accept no-fault compensation from a national tribunal for vaccination injuries, upholding the dismissal of a suit brought by a couple whose baby son died after an immunization shot. A San Francisco Chronicle article about the news can be found here.
  • Last week, a national anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, in a letter to Georgia legislators, requested that they drop the hospital fee that raises money for the state’s Medicaid program. Norquist’s letter ignited a heated discussion over Georgia’s hospital tax. A Kaiser Health News article introduces the story.
  • According to a survey at the University of Calgary in Canada, 45 percent of respondents said that money is an acceptable incentive for organ donations from living donors, and 70 percent of them responded that cash is an acceptable enticement for people to donate their organs after death. Dr. Manns, a researcher on the survey, suggests the need to consider a system that compensates organ donors. A detailed story about the survey can be found here.

Petrie-Flom Interns’ Weekly Round-up: September 16-28

[Ed. Note: We have a few weekly round-ups available here at Bill of Health (from Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, and from Nic Terry‘s list of what’s worth reading each week), but we’ll give you one more from our Petrie-Flom interns for good measure.  And this week – a bonus!  A two-week round-up…]

By Hyeongsu Park and Kathy Wang

  • On Thursday, September 20, the Appellate Court of Illinois ruled that pharmacists can refuse to dispense emergency contraceptives because of religious beliefs. The court’s opinion can be found here. (And Nadia Sawicki’s post here.)
  • An article published on guardian.co.uk introduces Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients. The book describes how drug manufacturers do not disclose full information about the drugs they produce to doctors and patients, resulting in potential harms to patients.
  • The Inter-American Court of Human Rights will decide within the next few months whether Costa Rica, the only country that forbids in vitro fertilization, has infringed basic rights with its ban.
  • Two Swedish women have donated their wombs to their daughters hoping that the daughters will be able to bear children. These are the world’s first mother-to-daughter uterus transplants.
  • A BioEdge blog introduces Tom Koch’s book Thieves of Virtue: When Bioethics Stole Medicine. The book unsparingly attacks the entire discipline of bioethics and questions its raison d’etre.
  • A recent Congress-mandated report by the National Research Council voiced concerns over the implications of a growing, aging population on the economy and federal policy. The Council and corresponding experts expressed their doubts over the sustainability of programs such as Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid and urged for policy makers to find alternatives to these programs.

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