By Stephen P. Wood Privacy, especially as it relates to healthcare and protecting sensitive medical information, is an important issue. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better know as HIPAA, is a legislative action that helps to safeguard personal medical information. This protection is afforded to individuals by the Privacy Rule, which dictates who…
By Ryan J. Duplechin As waves of opioid lawsuits have mounted in the federal courts, one district court was chosen to shepherd all the cases, and one judge is motivated to step up to stem the tide of the epidemic. In the Northern District of Ohio, Judge Dan A. Polster was chosen by the Judicial…
By Stephen P. Wood The opioid epidemic and the toll it is taking is on American lives has resulted in the declaration of a public health emergency by the Trump administration. There were 42,000 deaths from suspected opioid overdose in 2016, more than in any previous year to date. These deaths illuminate the direct impact…
By Stephen Wood Naloxone is an opioid-receptor antagonist. In other words, it has the ability to displace an opioid from the receptor site, and essentially reverse its activity to save overdose victims. However, a significant increase in the cost of naloxone has put it out of reach of the people who need it most.
By Stephen P. Wood The opioid epidemic has been declared a public health emergency, allowing for access to public health funding, in an effort to raise awareness and deploy public health initiatives. This declaration was in response to the growing numbers of overdoses and overdose deaths in the United States.
By Brian Barnett, via the Washington Post I’m an addiction specialist, and my voice-mail inbox is always nearly full. Some messages are from desperate individuals looking for outpatient treatment or help finding a detoxification program. Others are from patients needing a letter confirming their treatment for a child-custody dispute or care providers informing me that…
By Mason Marks Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it was reported that Facebook planned to partner with medical organizations to obtain health records on thousands of users. The plans were put on hold when news of the scandal broke. But Facebook doesn’t need medical records to derive health data from its users. It can use…
Addiction, Neuroscience, and the Criminal Law: Commonwealth vs. Julie Eldred February 28, 2018 5:15 PM – 7:15 PM Wasserstein Hall, Room 1023 Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA Is addiction a disease? And does it matter for the criminal law? The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court now faces these questions in the potentially landmark…
Addiction, Neuroscience, and the Criminal Law: Commonwealth vs. Julie Eldred February 28, 2018 5:15 PM – 7:15 PM Wasserstein Hall, Room 1023 Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA Is addiction a disease? And does it matter for the criminal law? The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court now faces these questions in the potentially landmark…
By Mason Marks Drug overdose is a leading cause of death in Americans under 50. Opioids are responsible for most drug-related deaths killing an estimated 91 people each day. In Part I of this three-part series, I discuss how the President’s Commission on Combatting Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis misinterpreted scientific studies and used…
