Category: Race

St. Paul, Minnesota /US - June 4, 2020: Police throand protestors during the protests following the murder of George Floyd.

Research and Regulation of Less-Lethal Projectiles Critically Needed

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Rohini Haar and Brian Castner

In 2020, the use of less-lethal weapons in the United States, already overused, took a sharp upturn during the police response to the Black Lives Matter protests. In response, last month, the U.S. House of Representatives formed a commission of inquiry to investigate the health effects of one such weapon: tear gas. Such research is welcome and badly needed. However, tear gas is only part of a larger story. While well-intentioned, the House missed an opportunity to address a wider and more dangerous issue: the use of “less-lethal” projectiles against crowds.

In protecting basic human rights and civil liberties, it is critical to better understand and regulate projectiles — they are dangerous and poorly studied weapons.

Regardless of their specific characteristics, all less-lethal projectiles work by the same principle: they inflict blunt trauma, pain, and intimidation on individuals, while attempting to limit the chances of death or disability as compared to live ammunition. While the weapons certainly do cause shock and pain, avoiding death and disability has not been so straightforward.

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Gavel and a house on a white background. Concept art for eviction.

Eviction Moratorium Cases Reveal Courts’ Misunderstanding of Public Health

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Mahathi Vemireddy and Faith Khalik

Amid the COVID-19 Delta variant surge, the federal eviction moratorium — a key public health protection — will soon expire, and faces tough prospects for extension due to a series of legal battles.

These legal challenges highlight a narrow — and dangerous — conception of public health held by some courts, one which fails to recognize how social conditions such as housing can compound the impact of a virus. To protect our nation’s health, this misunderstanding of public health must be remedied.

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Gloved hand holding medical rapid test labeled COVID-19 over sheet of paper listing the test result as negative.

How Long COVID Is Forcing a Reckoning with the Neglect of Post-Infectious Chronic Illnesses

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Colleen Campbell

While post-viral illnesses are not new, they have been considerably neglected by the public health, medical, and scientific communities. This invisibility has, in many ways, been constructed by institutional neglect and medical sexism.

The COVID-19 pandemic is now causing a reckoning with this institutional neglect. This is because COVID Long Haulers and patient advocates for the chronically ill are forcing an unprecedented recognition for these chronic complex diseases.

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Herndon, USA - April 27, 2020: Virginia Fairfax County building exterior sign entrance to Mom's Organic Market store with request to wear face mask due to covid-19 pandemic.

The Current COVID-19 Surge, Eugenics, and Health-Based Discrimination

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Jacqueline Fox

COVID has shown us that the burdens and inequities that characterize everyday life for many Americans are not merely vestiges of an older time, but an honest reflection of our unwillingness to treat everyone with dignity and respect.

We have undergone an ethical stress test in the last 18 months. While many people have exhibited heroic commitments to their fellow citizens, much of our governmental response is indefensible in a society that professes to care for all of its members. This implies we are not such a society.

Rather, we are a society riddled with healthism — discrimination based on health status — and eugenics — a pseudo-science that arbitrarily elevates some human traits over others, much as we do with breeding dogs and horses.

As a result, although we are armed with the power to prevent much harm, we lack the will or inclination to use that power for our most vulnerable. Instead, we place different values on people’s lives using arbitrary definitions of quality, and treat people differently based on their health status. Examples include placing a lower value on a life because a person is older, disabled, or overweight.

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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

Chloe Reichel Leave a comment

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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Close-up Of Stethoscope On Us Currency And American Flag.

America’s Underinsurance Crisis in the Age of COVID-19

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Dessie Otachliska

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the underinsurance crisis that has long kept millions of Americans on the precipice of financial disaster — just one unexpected illness or injury away from bankruptcy.

A 2019 Gallup poll showed that 25% of Americans reported delaying treatment for serious medical conditions due to cost concerns — the highest proportion since Gallup first began asking the question in 1991. Even during the pandemic, when medical treatment could mean the difference between life and death, studies show that nearly 1 in 7 Americans would avoid seeking medical care if they experienced key COVID-19 symptoms because of fears associated with the cost of treatment.

These statistics are unsurprising, and the concerns they underscore well-founded: the average treatment costs for COVID patients with symptoms serious enough to require inpatient hospital stays range from $42,486 for relatively mild cases to $74,310 for patients with major complications or comorbidities.

In the pandemic context, hesitance to seek medical treatment due to fear of the associated cost has proved tragically fatal. Darius Settles died after being dissuaded from seeking further COVID-19 treatment due to his uninsured status. The Nashville, TN hospital where Settles originally received care had failed to disclose the possibility that his medical costs would be covered by the federal government. And, despite the availability of reimbursement funds, the hospital nonetheless sent his widow a bill for a portion of his treatment costs.

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Baby feet in hands

Colorado Passes Landmark Birth Equity Bill Package

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By Alexa Richardson

This month, activists in Colorado succeeded in passing a sweeping package of bills designed to address lack of access, inequities, and mistreatment throughout the obstetric system.

The ambitious provisions offer a new model for legislative approaches to transforming maternity care.

The bills, SB21-193, SB21-194, and SB21-101, were crafted in large part through the efforts of Elephant Circle, an organization that advocates birth justice by promoting self-determination and support for pregnant people, and tackling power and oppression. In an interview, Elephant Circle Founder and Director, Indra Lusero, described the Birth Equity Bill Package as “an opportunity to change the conversation by pulling together the broad range of issues facing pregnant people and presenting them as one coherent policy platform.”

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New Market, Esplanade, Kolkata, 05-23-2021: Due to lockdown, closed market and roadside hawker stalls at S. S. Hogg Market, which usually is heavily crowded as a popular shopping arena.

A Critical Analysis of the Eurocentric Response to COVID-19: Global Classism

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Hayley Evans

The international response to COVID-19 has paid insufficient attention to the realities in the Global South, making the response Eurocentric in several ways.

The first post in this series scrutinized the technification of the international response to COVID-19. The second post looked at how the international pandemic response reflects primarily Western ideas of health, which in turn exacerbates negative health outcomes in the Global South.

This third and final installment analyzes the classist approach to the pandemic response. The international response has paid insufficient attention to the existence of the informal economy and of the needs of those who must work to eat — both of which are found more commonly in the Global South.

This series draws on primary research conducted remotely with diverse actors on the ground in Colombia, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom, as well as secondary research gathered through periodicals, webinars, an online course in contact tracing, and membership in the Ecological Rights Working Group of the Global Pandemic Network. I have written about previous findings from this work here.

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globe.

A Critical Analysis of the Eurocentric Response to COVID-19: Western Ideas of Health

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Hayley Evans

The international response to COVID-19 has paid insufficient attention to the realities in the Global South, making the response Eurocentric in several ways.

This series of blog posts looks at three aspects of the COVID-19 response that underscore this Eurocentrism. The first post in this series scrutinized the technification of the international response to COVID-19. This second post looks at how the international pandemic response reflects primarily Western ideas of health, which in turn exacerbates negative health outcomes in the Global South.

This series draws on primary research conducted remotely with diverse actors on the ground in Colombia, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom, as well as secondary research gathered through periodicals, webinars, an online course in contact tracing, and membership in the Ecological Rights Working Group of the Global Pandemic Network. I have written about previous findings from this work here.

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