Category: Alex Pearlman

human embryos under a microscope

A Lawsuit Involving an Alabama Man and a Fetus Is Particularly Threatening to Reproductive Rights

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Last week Alabama passed the most restrictive abortion law in the country, criminalizing abortion of “any woman known to be pregnant,” with very limited exceptions that do not include rape or incest. But a recent case in Alabama presents an even more threatening challenge to reproductive rights.

In a new paper published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, authors Dov Fox, Eli Y. Adashi, and I. Glenn Cohen, discuss a recent Alabama state court case involving a man suing an abortion clinic and the manufacturer of a pill that enabled his then-girlfriend to terminate her pregnancy at 6 weeks.

In a troubling decision, the court permitted the fetus be a co-plaintiff alongside the man in a “wrongful death” lawsuit. Read More

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Gamete Donor Anonymity is a Myth: Q&A With Seema Mohapatra

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By some accounts, 26 million people have undergone direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic or ancestry tests. While some of the results of these tests seem might seem obvious (I turned out to be half-Hungarian and half-Ashkenazi, to no one’s surprise), there have been a number of accounts in the media of test results that have been considerably more dramatic.

Some of the more shocking — and now shockingly common — scenarios are the ones in which a consumer finds out through a DTC test that they were donor-conceived, and that one or both of the parents who raised them are not their genetic relatives. Gamete donors, who often provide genetic material (eggs or sperm) with the promise of anonymity, are finding themselves the recipients of messages from genetic children they never intended to meet.

Gamete donors could argue that they have a right to privacy. But Prof. Seema Mohapatra suggests the idea of gamete donor privacy is no longer realistic, due to the state of genetic technology.

I sat down with Prof. Mohapatra to learn more about the many ethical and legal questions DTC genetic testing raises for donors, recipients, and clinics.

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Illustration of mitochondrial donation

Time to Revisit the Prohibition on So-Called “Three-Parent IVF”?

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In an editorial appropriately titled, “This Editorial Is Not About Designer Babies,” the New York Times supported efforts by the Petrie-Flom Center and suggested it was time for Congress to consider lifting the effective ban on mitochondrial replacement therapies — sometimes colloquially but inaccurately referred to as “three-parent IVF.”

The piece referred to the Petrie-Flom Center’s upcoming public event and Roundtable, where experts will have a general conversation about the state of the law in the U.S. and elsewhere and to, as a group, discuss whether the prohibition against MRT might be lifted and, if so, how that might be accomplished.

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The Future of Health Care? How States are Trailblazing Medicaid Buy-In Programs

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States can be laboratories of health reform.

Massachusetts and Oregon expanded insurance coverage during previous periods of federal inaction, and with solutions unlikely to come from a politically divided Washington D.C., how will states tackle the problem of health insurance becoming increasingly unaffordable and unattainable for many families?

Is there a role for the government to play a greater role in making health insurance affordable and accessible? As public support for action on health care grows, what options are available to states now?

I spoke to former Petrie-Flom Student Fellow and Medicaid policy scholar Emma Sandoe about states that have begun to explore Medicaid Buy-In policies, which allow people to purchase government backed health insurance or Medicaid-like plans. Read More

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FDA Commissioner Gottlieb Resigns: Twitter Reactions

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Citing wanting to spend more time with his family, Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced his resignation this week. Broadly liked on both sides of the aisle and within the biopharma industry, Gottlieb, a former physician and cancer survivor, made teen tobacco use a major issue during his two-year tenure.

In addition to working on lowering drug prices and bringing generic drugs to the market faster, both priorities for the Trump administration, Gottlieb has been a fierce advocate for a number of other public health issues, focusing the FDA’s attention on combating the opioid epidemic, creating harsher regulations for dietary supplements, and even “preserving Michelle Obama’s sugars labeling.”

Gottlieb had previously worked as a venture capitalist and board member for pharmaceutical companies, and made millions from his work in that industry, which caused alarm on the left when his appointment was originally announced. However, the commissioner surprised critics by divesting his interest in drug companies and calling for stronger and updated regulations across health-related industries.

Given his penchant for being chatty on Twitter, we rounded up some of the reactions to Gottlieb’s resignation from Bill of Health’s friends and family.

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Introducing the Global Health and Rights Project and Senior Fellow Alicia Yamin

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Despite leaps in biomedical innovation in the developed world, inequalities in global health outcomes persist, as well as systemic barriers to public health and health services. However, the struggle for health rights and global health justice continues.

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy is therefore thrilled to announce the launch of the Global Health and Rights Project (GHRP), which will promote theorization of a “right to health” under international law as well as applicable domestic law, challenges to using human rights frameworks to advance global health justice, the relationship between global economic and health governance, and more. Read More

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HIPAA is the Tip of the Iceberg When it Comes to Privacy and Your Medical Data

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Big data continues to reshape health. For patient privacy, however, the exponential increase in the amount of data related to patient health raises major ethical and legal challenges.

In a new paper in Nature Medicine, “Privacy in the age of medical big data,” legal and bioethical experts W. Nicholson Price and I. Glenn Cohen examine the ways in which big data challenges the protection (and the way we conceive) of health care privacy. Read More

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Anya Prince on Gene Therapy and Exacerbating Health Care Inequalities

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Anya Prince, a legal scholar and thought leader in the field of genetic discrimination, will present a new paper at Monday’s Health Law Workshop that interrogates whether gene therapies will exacerbate inequalities in health care, as more treatments enter the market. “Gene Therapy’s Field of Dreams: If You Build It, Will We Pay?” focuses on some of the many issues raised by the prices of gene therapies.
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Machine Learning in Medicine: Addressing Ethical Challenges

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Machine learning in medicine is accelerating at an incredible rate, bringing a new era of ethical and regulatory challenges to the clinic.

In a new paper published in PLOS Medicine, Effy Vayena, Alessandro Blasimme, and I. Glenn Cohen spell out these ethical challenges and offer suggestions for how Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), medical practitioners, and developers can ethically deploy machine learning in medicine (MLm). Read More

Graphic of IVF

What happens when a fertility clinic is responsible for destroying reproductive material?

Alex Pearlman 1 Comment

A recent article in Marie Claire delved into the story of a Cleveland fertility clinic that lost 4,000 frozen eggs and embryos belonging to 950 patients and featured commentary by Bill of Health contributors. In the piece, “When Your Dreams of Motherhood Are Destroyed,” three Bill of Health/Petrie-Flom Center affiliates discussed some of the many legal challenges of this particular case, and others like it.

The story was reported by  and is part of the ongoing series “How to Have a Baby.”

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