covid-19 vaccine Archives | Page 14 of 14

Why a COVID-19 Vaccine Shouldn’t be Mandatory

September 15, 2020September 15, 2020 Dorit Reiss 13 Comments

By Dorit Rubinstein Reiss and Y. Tony Yang

A future COVID-19 vaccine will not work without sufficient uptake, and some are considering mandates to get that uptake. Some scholars have gone so far as to call for compulsory vaccination for all U.S. residents in a recent USA Today column.

We believe premature mandates won’t work. In fact, they could backfire spectacularly.

There are several reasons for this. First, once we have an approved vaccine, we will not have enough doses to go around for those who want them. Forget mandates: even if all goes remarkably well, we will begin by producing and distributing tens of millions of doses—not the hundreds of millions needed to cover the entire United States.

Conflicts of Interest in the Hospital Sector: A Q&A with Rina K. Spence

September 8, 2020September 9, 2020 Chloe Reichel Leave a comment

By Chloe Reichel

Brigham and Women’s Hospital recently made headlines when the Boston Globe reported that the hospital’s president, Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, held a seat on the board of Moderna, a Cambridge biotech company that is working to develop an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. The hospital has a major role in a national study of the vaccine.

The hospital maintained that safeguards were put in place to protect against conflicts of interest during the collaboration. Nevertheless, amid public outcry, Nabel stepped down from the board.

But this story is just one high-profile case of what is commonplace in the hospital sector. A 2014 research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 40 percent of pharmaceutical company boards of directors had at least one member who also held, at the same time, a leadership role at an academic medical center.

Madison, Wisconsin / USA - April 24th, 2020: Nurses at Reopen Wisconsin Protesting against the protesters protesting safer at home order rally holding signs telling people to go home.

Great Responsibility: Navigating Moral Hazards During COVID-19

September 3, 2020September 2, 2020 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Jacqueline Salwa

Younger people may be driving the COVID-19 pandemic in part because they perceive the costs of complying with public health measures as higher and the expected benefits as lower compared with older individuals.

”Indemnifying Precaution: Economic Insights for Regulation of a Highly Infectious Disease,” a paper recently published in the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, explores how to align costs and benefits so that individuals of all ages adhere to precautions.

Younger people tend to experience less severe symptoms from COVID-19 infection, and may be disproportionately affected by other aspects of the pandemic. These include depression from lack of social interaction, stifled career advancement, and difficulties with providing for dependents. Compared to younger people, older people have a greater chance of being settled down, retired, and not responsible for dependents. As a result, those that receive the least benefit from taking precautions, and incur the greatest personal costs for abiding by these precautions, have a lack of incentive to follow precautionary public health measures. This is known, in economic terms, as a moral hazard.

How Does Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine Work, and Who Is Funding Its Development?

August 27, 2020August 25, 2020 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Cross-posted from Written Description, where it originally appeared on August 19, 2020.

By Jacob S. Sherkow, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Nicholson Price, and Rachel Sachs

Moderna, Inc., a Cambridge, MA-based biotech company, is a leading contender in the race to develop a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Moderna’s vaccine, however, works using a completely novel mechanism, unlike any other vaccine currently approved anywhere in the world. Despite this, the U.S. government—and two agencies in particular, the NIH and Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)—has invested, heavily, in the vaccine’s development. This week, we explore how these investments interact through different forms of research partnerships, and what this says about IP, novel technologies, and innovation policy.

COVID-19 Vaccine Advance Purchases Explained

August 11, 2020August 10, 2020 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Cross-posted from Written Description, where it originally appeared on August 5, 2020.

By Nicholson Price, Rachel Sachs, Jacob S. Sherkow, and Lisa Larrimore Ouellette

No vaccine for the novel coronavirus has been approved anywhere. Nevertheless, governments and international organizations around the world are announcing deals for billions of dollars to procure tens of millions of doses of vaccines from companies that are still running clinical trials, including a $2.1 billion deal with Sanofi and GSK announced by the US on Friday. What’s going on? And what do these deals tell us about innovation policy for COVID-19 vaccines? In this post, we lay out the landscape of COVID-19 vaccine pre-purchases; we then turn to the innovation impact of these commitments, and finish by asking what role patents and compulsory licensing have to play.
Read More

New TWIHL: Ethical Issues in Development of a COVID-19 Vaccine

July 29, 2020July 29, 2020 Nicolas P. Terry Leave a comment

This episode is the first of a series of shows dealing with health care and research ethics related to COVID-19.

Here, Tara Sklar from The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law introduces Arthur Caplan, the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor, Founding Head of the Division of Medical Ethics, and Co-Chair of the Working Group on Compassionate Use and Preapproval Access (CUPA) at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Dr. Caplan discusses ethical issues in development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

The series is co-sponsored by the NYU Grossman School of Medicine Division of Medical Ethics and the University of Arizona Health Law and Policy Program.

The Week in Health Law Podcast from Nicolas Terry is a commuting-length discussion about some of the more thorny issues in health law and policy. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts or Google Play, listen at Stitcher Radio, Spotify, Tunein or Podbean.

Show notes and more are at TWIHL.com. If you have comments, an idea for a show or a topic to discuss you can find me on Twitter @nicolasterry or @WeekInHealthLaw.

Tag: covid-19 vaccine