2020 San Pedro California April 30: Federal Correctional Institution Terminal Island prison. Half the inmates there were infected with coronavirus.

Carceral Health Care Is Designed to Fail

By Andrea C. Armstrong

COVID-19 is not the first pandemic within prisons. Modern history is littered with examples of disease outbreaks in carceral spaces, including tuberculosis, influenza, and MRSA. Like these earlier carceral pandemics, the over 620,000 COVID-19 infections and 3,100 related deaths among incarcerated individuals to date simply expose how U.S. health law and policy fails to protect people in custody.

Only incarcerated people have a constitutional right to healthcare in the United States. That right, however, is rendered toothless when supplied through a punitive system that lacks meaningful standards and robust oversight.

Here is what we know — despite the secrecy that shields penal institutions — about carceral health care.

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The White House, Washington, DC.

The Years of Magical Thinking: Pandemic Necrosecurity Under Trump and Biden

By Martha Lincoln

From spring 2020 through the present day, Americans have endured levels of sickness and death that are outliers among not only wealthy democracies, but around the world. No other country has recorded as many total COVID-19 casualties as the United States — indeed, no other country comes close.

This situation is not happenstance. From early moments in 2020, the concept of a right to health — and indeed, even a right to life — has been discounted in American policy, discourse, and practice. Quite mainstream and influential individuals and institutions — physicians, economists, and think tanks — have urged leaders to shed public health protections — particularly masking — and “move away” from the pandemic. Over the past two years in the United States, leaders in both political parties have capitulated to — if not embraced — the doxa that a certain amount of death and suffering is inevitable in our efforts to overcome (or “live with”) the pandemic. In a piece written during the first months of COVID under Trump, I called this dangerous yet influential outlook necrosecurity: “the cultural idea that mass death among less grievable subjects plays an essential role in maintaining social welfare and public order.”

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Washington DC 09 20 2021. More than 600,000 white flags honor lives lost to COVID, on the National Mall. The art installation " In America: Remember" was created by Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg.

Introduction to the Symposium: Health Law and Policy in an Era of Mass Suffering

By Chloe Reichel and Benjamin A. Barsky

Last spring, the United States crossed the bleak and preventable 1,000,000-death mark for lives lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this symposium, our hope is to acknowledge — and mourn — this current era of mass suffering and death.

In particular, we want to reckon with the role of health law and policy in shaping, and at times catalyzing, the impact that the pandemic has had on our loved ones and communities.

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Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany - March 23, 2021: Vials with the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine are used at the corona vaccination centers worldwide.

No Take-Backs: Moderna’s Attempt to Renege on its Vaccine Patent Pledge

By Jorge L. Contreras

On October 8, 2020, Moderna, the maker of one of the first mRNA-based vaccines for COVID-19 and the recipient of billions of dollars of U.S. government funding, announced that it felt “a special obligation … to use our resources to bring this pandemic to an end as quickly as possible.” As a result, it publicly promised that “while the pandemic continues, Moderna will not enforce our COVID-19 related patents against those making vaccines intended to combat the pandemic.” Moderna broke that promise on August 26, 2022, when it sued Pfizer and BioNTech, the producers of a competing mRNA vaccine, for patent infringement in the U.S. and Germany. This post explains why Moderna’s lawsuits should fail given its irrevocable and continuing nonenforcement pledge.

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Vial and syringe.

Can Children Consent to the COVID Vaccine? The Case of Foster Care and Juvenile Justice

By Victoria Kalumbi

Despite pediatric COVID-19 vaccine availability, many youth remain unvaccinated, and are thus at higher risk of life-altering outcomes as a result of contracting COVID-19.[1]

Some children may be unvaccinated by no choice of their own, but instead because of decisions made by parents, guardians, or state or local government officials.

In this post, I argue that young people should have the opportunity to consent to vaccines. I focus on the specific case of children in foster care and the juvenile justice system, as they are particularly vulnerable amid the ongoing pandemic. However, the legal and political avenues explored in this piece to ensure that young people have a stake in their health and vaccine status are broadly generalizable to all children.

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Georgia, Atlanta USA March 6, 2020.

For Whom Does the CDC Think it Works?

By Jennifer S. Bard

As weekly deaths from COVID in the U.S. soar into thousands, monkeypox continues to spread, and New York reports the country’s first case of paralytic polio since 1979, it is fair to question the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s effectiveness and ability to achieve its mission to “to protect America from health, safety and security threats” and its pledge to “base all public health decisions on the highest quality scientific data that is derived openly and objectively” and “place the benefits to society above the benefits to our institution.”

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Vaccines.

COVID-19, Patents, and Trade Secrets

By David Gindler & Jasper L. Tran

Has the worldwide distribution of COVID-19 vaccines been impacted by patent rights? David Gindler, head of IP at Milbank LA, and Jasper L. Tran, senior associate at Milbank LA, argue that the story is much more complicated — making vaccines involves much more than waiving patents, they explain.

The following article, which is adapted from the authors’ conversation with Vanderbilt Law Review podcast editor Jacob Goodman on Hot Topics in Intellectual Property Law, provides an overview of the complicated intellectual property landscape associated with COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics.

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hand opening white plastic pvc window at home.

It’s Time for the Federal Government to Get Back to Protecting the Nation Against COVID-19

By Jennifer S. Bard

Over the past two years, the Supreme Court has shown unprecedented hostility to efforts by both state and federal government to stop the spread of what every day turns out to be an even more deadly pandemic.

These decisions are devastating, and likely signal a continued attack on government authority, but they are not a reason to give up.

The federal government can still use its vast resources to slow the spread and continued mutation of the virus, by telling people what it knows of the danger, and what it knows about how to mitigate it.

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Bill of Health - Globe and vaccine, covid vaccine

COVID ‘Compromise’ on International IP Underscores Need for New Approach

By Cynthia M. Ho

The leaked compromise regarding a “waiver” of international intellectual property (IP) obligations under the TRIPS Agreement for World Trade Organization (WTO) members has met harsh criticism as a shadow of the original proposal to waive international obligations regarding patent, trade secret, and copyright obligations relating to any COVID vaccine, treatment, diagnostic, or personal protective equipment (PPE).

The compromise excludes diagnostics, treatments, and PPE. It only narrowly modifies compulsory licenses of patents covering COVID vaccines. Moreover, it imposes additional restrictions on use of compulsory licenses. But still, multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers have protested even these modest changes from the status quo, arguing that there is no IP problem that needs to be fixed.

Clearly there is a problem. It has taken 18 months since the original Indian and South African proposal to get to this limited compromise, while gross vaccine inequity between wealthy and poor countries continues. In addition, the leaked compromise between four WTO members is still being debated — and even if agreement can be reached, it needs agreement of over 100 other WTO members. We need a new approach.

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