Category: Petrie-Flom Center

Person filling syringe from vial.

Religious Exemptions to Vaccines and the Anti-Vax Movement

Dorit Reiss 13 Comments

By Dorit Rubinstein Reiss

Two major problems with granting religious exemptions to vaccine mandates are that they are very hard to police, and that they are routinely gamed.

Religious freedom is a core value in the United States. This makes policing religious exemptions to vaccination hard – and rightly so. The government policing people’s religion raises a number of thorny issues.

The problem is that the same people who eagerly promote anti-vaccine misinformation are just as eager to misuse religion to avoid vaccinating, and have no hesitation or compunction about coaching others to do the same. And without policing, it is easy for those misled by anti-vaccine misinformation to use the religious exemption.

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Impact of Journal of Law and the Biosciences Continues to Grow

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

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

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

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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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Key Takeaways from Petrie-Flom Center Discussion on Vaccine Passports

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

As mask mandates fall to the wayside, COVID-19 digital health passes, often called vaccine passports, hold promise as a tool to verify whether individuals may enter a space without a face covering.

Vaccine passports, however, also pose a number of ethical and legal challenges. Panelists discussed these concerns during an April 28 webinar hosted by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics titled, “Vaccine Passports: A Path to the New Normal?”

This article highlights key points made during the conversation.

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Wade Ackerman.

Meet Wade Ackerman, Petrie-Flom Center Advisory Board Member

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

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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The National Anti-Vaccine Movement Heads to Hartford to Intimidate CT Legislators

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By Arthur Caplan and Dorit Rubinstein Reiss

As Connecticut’s Senate prepares to vote tomorrow on whether to repeal Connecticut’s religious exemption from school immunization mandates, out-of-state anti-vaccine activists are mobilizing to threaten and intimidate legislators to vote against the bill.

The legislators should hold firm, and pass the bill the Governor says he will sign. They must not let aggressive attackers stop them from acting to make Connecticut’s children safer. Legislators should show the out-of-state anti-vaccine movement that intimidation doesn’t work here.

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Petrie-Flom Student Fellowship Now Accepting Applications

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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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Prison watch tower.

Government Report Finds Care Deficits for Pregnant People in Federal Custody

Elyssa Spitzer Leave a comment

By Elyssa Spitzer

Pregnant and postpartum people in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and U.S. Marshals Service receive care directed by policies that fail to meet national standards, according to a report recently issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). 

This, despite the fact that, incarcerated women are among the most vulnerable people, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. In the GAO report’s terms, incarcerated women: “often have medical and mental health conditions that make their pregnancies a high risk for adverse outcomes, which is compounded by inconsistent access to adequate, quality pregnancy care and nutrition while in custody.”

Notably, the report found that the BOP and U.S. Marshals’ policies failed to satisfy the national standards — to say nothing of the gaps that may exist between written policy and the care that is, in fact, provided. Read More

Disability with technology line icon set.

Reflecting on the Struggle for Disability Rights a Year into the Pandemic

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By Amalia Sweet

On March 9, the Petrie-Flom Center and Harvard Law School Project on Disability gathered a panel to discuss the extent to which the pandemic has set back progress toward ensuring the rights of persons with disabilities.

Though calls for solidarity in March 2020 declared the emerging pandemic to be a “great equalizer,” the past 12 months have demonstrated how the pandemic has exacerbated existing social inequalities, disproportionately impacting the already marginalized.

The panel discussion, hosted by Petrie-Flom Center Senior Fellow in Global Health and Rights Alicia Ely Yamin and moderated by Harvard Law School Project on Disability Executive Director Michael Ashley Stein, provided voice to the uniquely and acutely devastating impacts of the pandemic on persons with disabilities, who are still struggling to secure protection of their basic rights.

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