Lax Enforcement of Vaccine Laws Put Young Adults at Risk

Jennifer S. Bard 3 Comments

The news about the return of dangerous “childhood” illnesses gets worse and worse. Columbus, Ohio reports an outbreak of 225 cases—with over 50% students at Ohio State University.   It is probably no coincidence that Ohio State recommends but does not require students (outside of those in healthcare settings) be vaccinated in order to attend class.   It’s not just Mumps.  We are seeing cases of preventable diseases like measles and mumps and whooping cough because of parental decisions not to immunize their children but there is increasing evidence that the immunizations most adults received as infants or young children wear off—leaving the population at large vulnerable to infection once an outbreak occurs. Science Daily just reported a confirmed case of a fully vaccinated young woman contracting measles.  The CDC has not yet recommended that adults get booster shots for Mumps and Measles—although they have in some circumstances for Whooping Cough and Polio.  But the more likely it is for a person to be exposed to these diseases, the more important it is to be fully vaccinated.

So why is the law to blame here?  Read More

Introducing New Contributor Katherine Record

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Katherine Record is the Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation (CHLPI). Her work, in part, focuses on healthcare reform implementation, compliance training for healthcare providers related to consent for HIV testing and disclosure, domestic and global mental health law and policy, and implementing state electronic health record databases in compliance with federal and state privacy laws.  Prior to joining CHLPI, Katherine worked at the O’Neill Institute for National & Global Health Law at Georgetown University.  There she focused on public health law reform, firearms control, global preparation for pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent the transmission of HIV (PrEP), and the development of the legal portion of a genetics database. Katherine received her JD, cum laude, and masters in Psychology at Duke University, her MPH from Harvard’s School of Public Health, and her BA, magna cum laude, from Georgetown University.  She is licensed to practice law in the State of New York, serves as a collaborating mentor for Boston Children’s Hospital’s Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders, on the board of directors for Our Bodies Ourselves, as the liaison to the AIDS Coordinating Committee of the American Bar Association on behalf of the Health Law Section, and on the Harvard College Global Health Review’s Board of Advisors.

Recent Publications:

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FOR HARVARD STUDENTS: TOMORROW: Dallas Buyers Club: Free Film Screening and Discussion

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment
Image by christian razukas from Wikimedia Commons.

Dallas Buyers Club: Free Film Screening and Panel Discussion

April 16, 2014 6:00 PM
Wasserstein Hall 1010, 1585 Massachusetts Ave.

Students from across Harvard are invited to view a free screening of the Academy-award winning film Dallas Buyers Club and participate in a panel discussion about issues addressed in the film related to access to health care for the HIV community.  The panel discussion will address the following issues: the history of access to care and treatment for HIV; ongoing issues with fair pricing of HIV medications; the role of the FDA in access to experimental medicines; and the portrayal of HIV and LGBTQI individuals in the media as it impacts access to individual and public health resources. Panelists include:

  • Robert Greenwald, Director, Center for Health Law & Policy Innovation; Clinical Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
  • Christopher T. Robertson, Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Faculty Affiliate, Petrie-Flom Center
  • Grace Sterling Stowell, Executive Director, BAGLY: Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Youth

This event is open to students from all Harvard schools.  No pre-registration is required.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Health Law & Policy Innovation; the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics; and Lambda at Harvard Law School.

Harvard Effective Altruism (HEA): Thursday, April 17th: Critch on Aversion Factoring & Career Choice

Nir Eyal Leave a comment

A communication from Harvard Effective Altruism:

Aversion Factoring & Career Choice

with Dr. Andrew Critch

Thursday, April 17th 7-8:30 PM

Emerson 305

We often limit ourselves by avoiding things we find bothersome or scary.  But for almost anything you find bothersome, there’s someone out there who doesn’t!  How does that work?  Can you copy their enjoyment-powers?  If so, you have many more options for growth, career choice, and general do-gooding.  This presentation is based around a technique Dr. Critch teaches at the Center for Applied Rationality for using aversions as a source of creativity, and then getting over them.

Dr. Critch’s interest in rationality began as a teenager growing up in Newfoundland, Canada, where he says he “just had a lot of time to think about it”. When he was 14, he made his first attempt to extrapolate his instinctive preferences into a function whose expected integral he wanted to maximize. (In college he found out that some economists had been crazy enough to think humans worked this way automatically). He also won numerous national awards in mathematics and public-speaking competitions.

 

5/20 conference: “Biostatistics & FDA Regulation: The Convergence of Science & Law”

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Biostatistics and FDA Regulation: The Convergence of Science and Law

Tuesday, May 20, 2014, 8:00am – 5:00pm

Wasserstein Hall, Milstein West AB, Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave.

Symposium Presented by the Drug Information Association (DIA), the Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI), and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, in collaboration with the Harvard School of Public Health Department of Biostatistics and Harvard Catalyst | The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center.

Biostatistics is the application of statistics — the study of the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation and presentation of data — to a wide range of topics in life sciences.  Biostatistics informs the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory decision-making processes for premarket review of investigational drugs and devices and post-market surveillance of medical products, including decisions to require safety labeling changes and withdraw approval.   Recent developments, such as Congress’s creation of a new federal infrastructure for the dissemination of comparative effectiveness information, point to the need for a fresh look at the way in which biostatistical principles inform federal health care policy, particularly at the FDA.  This one-day symposium will give attendees the foundational knowledge they need to understand how biostatistics applies in FDA regulation, and will also address closely related issues residing at the intersection of statistical analysis and life sciences litigation. The full conference agenda is available on the website.

Registration is required in order to attend this event. Please register here.

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Research Round-Up: New Publications from the PHLR SciVal Experts Community

Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research Leave a comment

In honor of last week’s National Public Health Week, we have a lot of fresh, new PHLR. The latest crop of papers from public health law researchers touch on a number of important points and issues including transportation safety, implementation, tobacco control, and media presentation of public health law. Check out Scott Burris’s brief summaries after the jump!

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You can’t put a price tag on Sovaldi (unless it’s over $84K)

jurrutia 2 Comments

Gilead Sciences has developed a new drug (Sovaldi) that cures hepatitis C.

This is a huge deal: about 150 million people world wide are chronically infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV); according to the CDC 60-70% of people with chronic HCV will go on to develop chronic liver disease, 5-20% will develop cirrhosis over 20-30 years, and 1-5% will eventually die from the direct consequences of chronic infection (liver cancer or cirrhosis).

Sovaldi, which cures patients about 90% of the time with minimal side effects, could change all of this. John Castellani, President of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America says that this breakthrough is so valuable, that “you just can’t put a price tag on it.”

But of course, a price tag has been put on it: $84,000 for the 12-week course of treatment (or $1,000) per day.

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