Authors

Sarah graduated with a BA/LLB(Hons) from The University of Auckland. She then Judges’ Clerked at the High Court of New Zealand for two years, and went on to work as a junior litigator primarily acting on a broad range of commercial disputes. Sarah’s research interest is on assisted reproductive technology, and intends this area of law to be a key part of her practice in future. During her Fellowship, Sarah will write on the enforceability and interpretation of pre-conception agreements after relationship breakdowns.
woman doing yoga

Staying Sane and Hopeful During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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By Sarah Alawi

March was a month full of stress and anxiety around the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic and the disruption of normal life.

Following Harvard Law School’s decision to evacuate campus in early March, most students – myself included – had to hurriedly pack our lives into suitcases and return home in the space of days.

For some of us, getting home (for me, New Zealand) meant having to travel internationally  through airports and transit hubs amid a global pandemic. We landed on the other side to a new normal as the rest of the world caught on; we now live in quarantine “bubbles” while continuing to learn, meet and even socialize via Zoom. Our days are shadowed by restraint and a desperate hope to return to normalcy.

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The Ethical Conundrums of Ultra-personalized Drugs

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By Sarah Alawi

There has long been a debate about the potential ethical conflict between the role of the clinician and that of the clinical researcher. On the one hand, the overriding ethical obligation of a clinician is to maximize the individual patient’s health; on the other, the overriding ethical principle of the researcher is to produce socially useful research, with the consequence that, at times, it may require subordinating the best interests of the individual to achieve the greatest public good.

Although some have called into question the utility of this framing, the concept of ultra-personalized medicine is pushing this debate even further. The idea of ultra-personalized medicine – or “custom drugs” – is not new. As NHS England puts it, although “clinicians have been working to personalize care… throughout the history of medicine,” technological and scientific advances mean that never before has it been possible to move to an era of “truly personalized care.”

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Illustration of a pregnant Muslim woman in a hijab sitting cross-legged in front of plants

Egg Freezing Permissible in Islam, According to Egypt’s Dar Al-Ifta

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By Sarah Alawi

Dar Al-Ifta, Egypt’s Islamic body, issued a statement earlier this month on the legality of egg freezing under Islamic law following a controversial Facebook post by an Egyptian woman, Reem Mahana, on her decision to freeze her eggs.

Mahana said she froze her eggs for “the simple reason” that she wants to build a family when the time is right: “I cannot guarantee when exactly I will get married… I totally reject the idea of getting married to any man [only] to have a child.”

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What happens when assisted reproductive technology agreements break down?

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By Sarah Alawi

My name is Sarah Alawi; I’m an LLM Student at Harvard Law School, from New Zealand. I am excited to contribute to the Petrie-Flom Blog as a Petrie-Flom Student Fellow. My area of interest is assisted reproductive technology (ART), although I intend to use this forum to write on a broad range of medico-legal issues in the bioethics sphere. This post introduces my specific research interest in ART disputes, and concludes with a recommendation for anyone considering ART.

ART is a growth industry and yet, despite the sophistication of new birth technologies, its use depends on functioning human relationships. Commonly, parties try to define these relationships using pre-conception ART agreements. During my fellowship at the Petrie-Flom Center, I intend to write a thesis on what should happen, in terms of the parties’ rights at law, when three common forms of ART agreements break down:

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