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Impact of Journal of Law and the Biosciences Continues to Grow

The Journal of Law and Biosciences offers high-quality, open-access scholarship at the intersection of the biosciences and law. It is the first fully open-access, peer-reviewed legal journal to focus on these issues. The journal has international impact, with authors from across the globe vying for the opportunity to have their work published in the JLB.

Recently, the Journal of Law and the Biosciences received exciting news in the form of an updated impact factor score. The journal now has an impact factor of 3.583, a substantial increase from the year prior. It ranks #7 out of 151 law journals, an admirable position for the youngest journal included in the rankings. It is also second out of sixteen journals in the medical ethics category, as well as second out of seventeen journals in the legal medicine category.

In honor of this achievement, the Journal has compiled a list of the most impactful articles included in this calculation period.

The Journal continues to publish a wide variety of exciting new material. The most recent issue, which closed in June 2021, contains numerous articles from highly regarded scholars exploring hot-button issues in bioethics. The following excerpts offer a small preview of the wide breadth of analysis contained in the most recent edition.

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Traditional countryside scene in the Netherlands with windbreak lane of poplar trees in the wind under summer sky. Ens, Flevoland Province, the Netherlands.

Q&A with Mason Marks on New Psychedelics Law and Regulation Initiative

By Chloe Reichel

On June 30th, the Petrie-Flom Center announced the launch of a three-year research initiative, the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR), which is supported by a generous grant from the Saisei Foundation.

The Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School will advance evidence-based psychedelics law and policy.

In 2017, the FDA designated MDMA a breakthrough therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, and in 2018 the agency recognized psilocybin as a breakthrough therapy for treatment-resistant depression. These designations indicate that psychedelics may represent substantial improvements over existing treatments for mental health conditions. Many other psychedelics, including ibogaine, ketamine, and dimethyltryptamine, are the focus of ongoing psychiatric research and commercialization efforts.

Despite the proliferation of clinical research centers and increasing private investment in psychedelic drug development, there is a relative lack of research on the ethical, legal, and social implications of psychedelics research, commerce, and therapeutics.

In the following interview, which has been edited and condensed, Senior Fellow and POPLAR Project Lead Mason Marks explains how POPLAR will fill this gap, and previews some of the initiative’s topics of inquiry.

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Home innovation technology concept illustration.

Call for Abstracts — 2022 Petrie-Flom Center Annual Conference: Diagnosing in the Home

Contribute to the 2022 Petrie-Flom Center Annual Conference and subsequent book project!

Through October 14, 2021, the Petrie-Flom Center is accepting abstracts for its annual conference. The 2022 annual conference will focus on ethical, legal, and regulatory challenges and opportunities around at home digital health technology.

This conference will engage with the vision for a 21st century health care system that embraces the potential of at home digital products to support diagnoses, improve care, encourage caregivers, maximize pandemic resilience, and allow individuals to stay within the home when preferable. The goals of this conference and subsequent book project are to consider the ethical, sociological, regulatory, and legal challenges and opportunities presented by the implementation of digital products that support clinical diagnosis and/or treatment in patients’ homes over the next decade.

Interested in submitting an abstract, but want to know more about what we’re looking for? Read through the following frequently asked questions.

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Wade Ackerman.

Meet Wade Ackerman, Petrie-Flom Center Advisory Board Member

The Petrie-Flom Center is excited to welcome Wade Ackerman to our Advisory Board!

Ackerman is a partner in Covington’s FDA Regulatory group, where he advises companies and trade associations on complex Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issues. He also co-leads Covington’s multidisciplinary Digital Health Initiative, which advises clients who are using information technology and data to innovate and improve health.

To learn more about the expertise that Ackerman will bring to the Advisory Board, we asked him a few questions about his background and current areas of practice. The conversation touches on a range of topics, from misconceptions about the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization, to the promise that digital technologies hold in promoting health and wellness. The interview, which has been edited and condensed, follows.

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Petrie-Flom Center logo.

Petrie-Flom Student Fellowship Now Accepting Applications

What do a MacArthur Genius award winner, several health law professors at top schools, executive directors of leading health law centers, an associate chief counsel of the FDA, and partners and associates at top health care law firms all have in common? The Petrie-Flom Center Student Fellowship!

The Petrie-Flom Center Student Fellowship is a competitive one-year program designed to support Harvard graduate students interested in pursuing independent scholarly projects related to health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics.

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Petrie-Flom Center logo.

Call for Applications: Research Fellow for Diagnostic Digital Home Health

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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Telemedicine or telehealth virtual visit / video visit between doctor and patient on laptop computer and mobile phone device.

The Petrie-Flom Center Launches New Project: Diagnosing in the Home

Diagnosing in the Home will seek to examine the ethical, social, and legal challenges of digital home health products, with a focus on home diagnosis of infectious and chronic conditions.

January 27, 2021 – The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School today announced a new research initiative, Diagnosing in the Home: The Ethical, Legal, and Regulatory Challenges and Opportunities of Digital Home Health. This three-year project will seek to promote the translation of diagnostic medical services into home health care through regulatory and ethical frameworks. This initiative is generously supported by a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

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Close-up Of Doctor's Hand Measuring Blood Pressure Of Male Patient.

Understanding the Role of Race in Health: A New Digital Symposium

By Craig Konnoth

In the 1980s, a vanguard of critical race theorists debated their contemporaries as to whether law could or should play a role in achieving equity — in particular, racial equity. Scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Williams argued that while legal discourse historically had been used to oppress Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), history had shown that in the law also lay the seeds of empowerment. Conceptualizing BIPOC as persons endowed with legal rights, and as a community subject to heightened legal solicitude because of the historical injustices they have faced, has helped undergird their selfhood, dignity, identity and activism. Law could thus be a discourse of despair — but also one of hope.

Whether or not the years have proved those claims correct as to the law, today, a similar debate unfolds in the context of race, medicine, and health care. Today, medicine and the health care system embody discourses of power that rival the law. Will these discourses inevitably serve to oppress BIPOC — and if not, how can we harness their power to achieve justice? Those are the questions that this symposium seeks to answer.

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Petrie-Flom Center student fellows 2020-2021.

Petrie-Flom Welcomes 2020-2021 Student Fellows

(Clockwise from top left: Jenna Becker, Sravya Chary, Vrushab Gowda, Abe Sutton, Sunnie Ning, Laura Karas)

We are so excited to welcome a new group of Student Fellows to the Petrie-Flom Center family. These six students are a fantastic cohort of health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics scholars who join us from Harvard Law School and the HMS Center for Bioethics. While we cannot physically welcome our fellows this year, we are excited to provide them with a robust virtual fellowship.

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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Assessing legal responses to COVID-19 graphic.

New Report Assesses Legal Responses to COVID-19

Assessing Legal Responses to COVID-19 is a new, in-depth analysis of U.S. legal and policy responses to the pandemic.

In the report, 50 top national experts offer a new assessment of the U.S. policy response to the crisis. The research details the widespread failure of the country’s leadership in planning and executing a cohesive, national response, and how the crisis exposed weaknesses in the nation’s health care and public health systems.

The report’s authors also offer recommendations on how federal, state and local leaders can better respond to COVID-19 and future pandemics. Their proposals recommend how to strengthen executive leadership for a stronger emergency response; expand access to public health, health care, and telehealth; fortify protections for workers; and implement a fair and humane immigration policy.

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