The Petrie-Flom Center Staff, Author at Bill of Health

These patients’ samples were to be tested for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) serologic test.

Why Aren’t Therapeutic Antibodies Being Used More to Treat COVID-19?

February 22, 2021February 22, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Cross-posted from Written Description, where it originally appeared on January 29, 2021.

By Nicholson Price, Rachel Sachs, Jacob S. Sherkow, and Lisa Larrimore Ouellette

When former President Donald Trump contracted COVID-19 in fall 2020, he was treated with monoclonal antibodies, touted as potentially miraculous treatments. Unlike other treatments so touted, there is some rigorous evidence to support these assertions: antibody drugs look like the best treatments currently available to prevent COVID cases from progressing to hospitalization. But months later, the drugs are in limited use and seem to be only a moderately important part of the COVID-19 response. Why aren’t antibodies making more of a difference for ordinary Americans?

Deep Phenotyping Could Help Solve the Mental Health Care Crisis

February 17, 2021February 18, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Justin T. Baker

The United States faces a growing mental health crisis and offers insufficient means for individuals to access care.

Digital technologies — the phone in your pocket, the camera-enabled display on your desk, the “smart” watch on your wrist, and the smart speakers in your home — might offer a path forward.

Deploying technology ethically, while understanding the risks of moving too fast (or too slow) with it, could radically extend our limited toolkit for providing access to high-quality care for the many individuals affected by mental health issues for whom the current mental health system is either out of reach or otherwise failing to meet their need.

Should Smokers be Prioritized for COVID Vaccine?

February 12, 2021February 11, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Cross-posted from Harvard Law Today, where it originally appeared on February 2, 2021.

By Jeff Neal

Should smoking be among the pre-existing health risks that qualify people for priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine? In a Zoom interview with Harvard Law Today, public health expert Carmel Shachar J.D./M.P.H. ’10 says the answer is yes.

CDC guidelines, which most states are following as they launch mass vaccination programs, say people with certain underlying medical conditions that put them at greater risk for hospitalization or death if they contract COVID-19 (also known as co-morbidities) should receive access to the vaccine before the general population. In Massachusetts, these individuals will be eligible to receive the vaccine in Group 4 of Phase 2 of the state’s vaccination rollout plan. But many have been surprised to see smoking listed among the qualifying conditions, alongside cancer and heart disease.

Shachar, the executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, says that smoking is often the result of structural and biological factors that make it more prevalent in historically marginalized communities, and that denying priority access for smokers would reinforce existing inequities. More practically, she says, “every time a person gets vaccinated, it’s good for the community.”

Call for Applications: Research Fellow for Diagnostic Digital Home Health

February 11, 2021February 11, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Overview

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School is hiring a full-time post-doctoral fellow to support its newly launched Diagnostic Digital Home Health initiative. This position will likely be a three year commitment.

This sponsored research project examines the ethical, social, and legal challenges of digital home health products, with a focus on home diagnosis of infectious and chronic conditions. This project will develop scholarship, guidelines, and proposed regulations for the ethical implementation of these products, using focus groups, virtual workshops, and interdisciplinary scholarship, with a focus on considerations of access and equity, social interconnectedness, and patient privacy.

Previous Petrie-Flom Center post-doctoral fellows have used their positions as successful launching pads for tenure-track legal, health policy, and bioethics academic careers. Our most recent post-doctoral fellow has published in leading journals such as JAMA, Science, and the Journal of Law and the Biosciences. She has been interviewed as an expert in biomedical regulation by media outlets such as Forbes and Lancet Digital Health and presented to regulators at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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Incidental Findings in Deep Phenotyping Research: Legal and Ethical Considerations

February 10, 2021February 18, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Amanda Kim, M.D., J.D.^‡, Michael Hsu, M.D.^‡, Amanda Koire, M.D., Ph.D.^‡, Matthew L. Baum, M.D., Ph.D., D.Phil.^‡

What obligations do researchers have to disclose potentially life-altering incidental findings (IFs) as they happen in real time?

Deep phenotyping research in psychiatry integrates an individual’s real-time digital footprint (e.g., texts, GPS, wearable data) with their biomedical data (e.g., genetic, imaging, other biomarkers) to discover clinically relevant patterns, usually with the aid of machine learning. Findings that are incidental to the study’s objectives, but that may be of great importance to participants, will inevitably arise in deep phenotyping research.

The legal and ethical questions these IFs introduce are fraught. Consider three hypothetical cases below of individuals who enroll in a deep phenotyping research study designed to identify factors affecting risk of substance use relapse or overdose:

A 51-year-old woman with alcohol use disorder (AUD) is six months into sobriety. She is intrigued to learn that the study algorithm will track her proximity to some of her known triggers for alcohol relapse (e.g., bars, liquor stores), and asks to be warned with a text message when nearby so she can take an alternative route. Should the researchers share that data?

A 26-year-old man with AUD is two years into sobriety. Three weeks into the study, he relapses. He begins arriving to work inebriated and loses his job. After the study is over, he realizes the researchers may have been able to see from his alcohol use surveys, disorganized text messages, GPS tracking, and sensor data that he may have been inebriated at work, and wishes someone had reached out to him before he lost his job. Should they have?

A 35-year-old man with severe opioid use disorder experiences a near-fatal overdose and is discharged from the hospital. Two weeks later, his smartphone GPS is in the same location as his last overdose, and his wearable detects that his respiratory rate has plummeted. Should researchers call EMS? Read More

Pen hovering over words "I agree" with check box next to it.

Unique Challenges to Informed Consent in Deep Phenotyping Research

February 10, 2021February 18, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Benjamin C. Silverman

Deep phenotyping research procedures pose unique challenges to the informed consent process, particularly because of the passive and boundless nature of the data being collected and how this data collection overlaps with our everyday use of technology.

As detailed elsewhere in this symposium, deep phenotyping in research involves the collection and analysis of multiple streams of behavioral (e.g., location, movement, communications, etc.) and biological (e.g., imaging, clinical assessments, etc.) data with the goal to better characterize, and eventually predict or intervene upon, a number of clinical conditions.

Obtaining voluntary competent informed consent is a critical aspect to conducting ethical deep phenotyping research. We will address here several challenges to obtaining informed consent in deep phenotyping research, and describe some best practices and relevant questions to consider.

Doctor or surgeon with organ transport after organ donation for surgery in front of the clinic in protective clothing.

Recent Organ Procurement Organization Regulations Will Save Lives

February 5, 2021February 5, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Matthew Wadsworth

Thirty-three Americans die every day for lack of an organ transplant. As the CEO of an organ procurement organization (OPO) — one of the network of 57 government contractors responsible for organ recovery across the country — this is what I think about every day: how to help the 3,000 people waiting in my home state of Ohio and the more than 100,000 others around the country who wake up each morning hoping they get a call that a transplant is available.

Fortunately, the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently published new, pro-patient regulations to bring baseline accountability to OPOs. While some of my peers have opposed the reform effort, I see it as long overdue.

Washington, USA- January13, 2020: FDA Sign outside their headquarters in Washington. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA or USFDA) is a federal agency of the USA.

Weaknesses in Medical Device Regulation Worsened by Trump Administration

February 5, 2021February 5, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Jacob Howard

In the waning days of the Trump administration, a final push was made to fundamentally weaken regulation of medical devices.

Lambasted as a “full frontal assault on public health” by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials, key policy changes include proposed emergency exemptions to bring a multitude of devices to market without the necessary scientific backing. Justified as a strategy to expedite the delivery of life-saving products, this speed comes at a risk to millions of patients.

As the third most prevalent cause of death in the U.S., medical error continues to be a critical issue that is exacerbated by weakening integrity of the regulatory process. This issue is further compounded by the fact that past regulatory failures in the medical device sphere have not been adequately addressed. The surgical stapler offers an illustrative example.

Lessons Learned from Deep Phenotyping Patients with Rare Psychiatric Disorders

February 3, 2021February 18, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Catherine A Brownstein and Joseph Gonzalez-Heydrich

Given the potential sensitivities associated with describing (i.e., phenotyping) patients with potentially stigmatizing psychiatric diagnoses, it is important to acknowledge and respect the wishes of the various parties involved.

The phenotypic description and depiction of a patient in the literature, although deidentified, may still be of great impact to a family.

By way of example, a novel genetic variant was identified as a likely explanation for the clinical presentation of a patient in a large cohort of individuals with neurodevelopmental and/or psychiatric phenotypes, a finding of great medical interest. The research team elected to further study this candidate and collected samples for functional evaluation of the gene variant and preparation of a case report.

Because the patient had a complicated phenotype, several physicians from various specialties were involved in the patient’s care. The paper draft was circulated amongst the collaborating clinicians and researchers and ultimately shared with the patient’s family by one of their involved caregivers. This is typically not a requirement of such studies, as the informed consent process includes the subjects’ understanding and consent for dissemination of deidentified results in the scientific literature. But as a general practice, families are informed about manuscripts in process, and in this case the family had requested to be kept abreast of ongoing developments.

“Actionability” and the Ethics of Communicating Results to Study Participants

February 3, 2021February 18, 2021 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Patrick Monette

To what end does a physician have a responsibility toward a research participant? Specifically, what data may be considered “actionable” for the physician to disclose to the patient, and when and how might this be done?

In the clinical setting, contemporary medical ethics address a physician’s “fiduciary responsibility.” That is, there is a well-established professional expectation that the physician will place the patient’s interests above their own and advocate for their welfare. This post focuses on an alternative dyad, that of physician and research participant, to explore how the field has broached the topic of actionability in the setting of clinical research. Read More

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