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The Petrie-Flom Center staff often posts updates, announcements, and guests posts on behalf of others.
Washington, D.C. skyline with highways and monuments.

COVID-19 as Disability Interest Convergence?

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By Jasmine E. Harris

Some have suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic could be a moment of what critical race theorist Derrick Bell called “interest convergence,” where majority interests align with those of a minority group to create a critical moment for social change.

It would be easy to think that interests indeed have converged between disabled and nondisabled people in the United States. From education to employment, modifications deemed “unreasonable” became not only plausible but streamlined with broad support.

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Protesters holding signs that read My Body My Choice, Human right, Bans Off Our Bodies, Abortion Is Healthcare.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and Its Devastating Implications for Immigrants’ Rights

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By Asees Bhasin

While reproductive injustice against immigrants is not new, they are now even more vulnerable to reproductive oppression in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning the constitutional right to abortion.

Immigrant reproduction has long been vilified and opposed, with immigrant parents facing accusations of being hyper-fertile and giving birth to “anchor babies.” Additionally, pregnant immigrants have faced additional structural barriers to accessing necessary abortion care. This article explains how these injustices are likely to be exacerbated by the Dobbs ruling.

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Empty hospital bed.

Do No Harm: A Call for Decarceration in Hospitals

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By Zainab Ahmed

In an era of mass suffering, some still suffer more than others. What’s worse, there is nothing natural about it. It is human made.

As an emergency medicine resident at a large academic hospital in Los Angeles, I see how incarcerated patients’ suffering is sanctioned by hospitals and medical professionals, despite their pledge to do no harm.

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A stethoscope tied around a pile of cash, with a pill bottle nearby. The pill bottle has cash and pills inside.

We Haven’t ‘Learned the Lessons of COVID’ Until We Remake the Political Economy of Health

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By Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant

Over the course of the pandemic it has been popular to claim that we have “learned lessons from COVID,” as though this plague has spurred a revolution in how we treat illness, debility, and death under capitalism.

Management consulting firm McKinsey, for example, writes that COVID has taught us that “infectious diseases are a whole-of-society issue.” A Yale Medicine bulletin tells us that we successfully learned “everyone is not treated equally, especially in a pandemic.” These bromides reflect the Biden administration’s evaluation of its own efforts; a recent White House report professes to have “successfully put equity at the center of a public health response for the first time in the nation’s history.”

We have learned nothing from COVID. The ongoing death, debility, disability, and immiseration of the pandemic are testament only to a failed political economy that pretends at magnanimity.

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Drug test strips.

Synthetic Cannabinoids and the Lack of Substance Use Disorder Treatment in Carceral Settings

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By Aaron Steinberg, Ada Lin, Alice Bukhman, LaToya Whiteside, and Elizabeth Matos

The inability of prisons and jails to address the drivers of and treat substance use disorders, especially during the pandemic, is leading to underexplored health ramifications for prisoners, and particularly for prisoners who identify as Black, Indigenous, or other people of color (BIPOC), who already had comparatively poorer health outcomes.

This article focuses on one substance of growing popularity in carceral settings: synthetic cannabinoids (SC), which are frequently referred to as K2 or spice.

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pills

Everything You Wanted to Know About Expanded Access but Were Afraid to Ask, Part 1

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By Alison Bateman-House, Hayley M. Belli, and Sage Gustafson

This series is adapted from a webinar hosted by PRIM&R on August 5, 2021: IRB Review of Expanded Access Protocols that Collect Real World Data: Considerations and Guidance.

Part 1: What is Expanded Access and How Does it Work?

Expanded Access (EA) is a regulatory mechanism that allows patients, through their physicians, to request the use of an unapproved medical product in a treatment setting.

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scoreboard with home and guests written on it at sunset time.

A Mind Is A Terrible _____ To Waste

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By Vincent “Tank” Sherrill

You fill in the blank! I’ve often referred to the mind as a womb, or a laboratory of life, not a “thing,” but rather a place where thoughts and ideas are conceived. However, since COVID-19 has been introduced on the scene, I’ve watched a cold game being played inside two Washington State prisons: the game between “The Progression of the Mind versus The Regression of the Mind.”

I didn’t have a front row seat in the Colosseum to this American tragedy; I was one of the 2.3 million sacrificial bodies. (Some of these bodies were released, back into a society not prepared to receive, due to their own post-COVID health needs.)

Supposedly, under the watchful eye of Lady Justice, prisoners are afforded certain inalienable rights and privileges, like religious and education services, for the redemptive qualities they both provide. However, due to this plague of epic proportion within these walls (some ancient, and some modern), which have made my domicile for 28 years, these basic services that provide the space for the Mind to grow, develop, and reconcile ceased.

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Student fellows 2022-2023 cohort.

Petrie-Flom Welcomes 2022-2023 Student Fellows

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(Clockwise from top left: Matt Chun, Sarah Gabriele, Katie Gu, Sanjay Reddy, Aparajita Lath)

We are excited to welcome a new group of Student Fellows to the Petrie-Flom Center family. These five students are a fantastic cohort of health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics scholars who join us from across Harvard.

They each will undertake a year-long research project with mentorship from Center faculty and affiliates, and also will blog here at Bill of Health regularly. Keep an eye out for their bylines!

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WASHINGTON MAY 21: Pro-choice activists rally to stop states’ abortion bans in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on May 21, 2019.

Restricting Reproductive Rights During the War on Drugs: Intersectional Regimes of Surveillance and Criminalization That Harm Us All

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By Taleed El-Sabawi, Jennifer J. Carroll, and Bayla Ostrach

Health law and policy in the United States are, in many senses, driven by a desire to control. When that control is enacted to impose anti-scientific but deeply moralized social norms, suffering always follows. Consider, for example, the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended a constitutionally recognized right to abortion. This decision allows states to exert near-total control over pregnant people and their bodies — and many are already experiencing physical and emotional harm as a result.

This suffering at the hands of the state is compounded by existing drug law and policies, which also prioritize control over bodies above personal wellbeing and autonomy. Pregnant people who use drugs (including alcohol) are often subject to both of these coercive regimes, facing head-on the harmful synergism between drug criminalization and the criminalization of abortion.

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LISBON, PORTUGAL - 7 NOVEMBER 2017: Dr. Oz, heart surgeon & television personality speaks at the Web Summit, Lisbon.

The Dr. Oz Paradox

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By Claudia E. Haupt

Why does the law sanction giving bad advice to one patient, while it permits giving bad advice to millions of YouTube or television viewers, which may result in significant physical harm?

We might call this the “Dr. Oz paradox.” Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race, is a famous television personality as well as a licensed physician. But, according to one study, half of his publicly disseminated medical advice is wrong. Yet, his sizable audience may very well follow it anyway, and perhaps suffer harm as a result. Such bad advice, which could get any doctor in legal trouble if disseminated to their patients, may be given to the public at large without fear of sanction. The consequences of this sharp doctrinal distinction can be quite jarring.

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