by Jonathan J. Darrow Until recently, most ordinary people had never heard of “pharmacy compounding.” Then, a number of deaths and illnesses caused by a drug that was compounded in a Framingham, Massachusetts pharmacy propelled drug compounding to the national spotlight (see, e.g., Denise Grady et al., Scant Oversight of Drug Maker in Fatal Meningitis…
Friday, November 2, 2012 8:30am – 6:30pm (reception to follow) Milstein Conference Rooms, 2nd Floor Wasserstein Hall 1585 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA The Petrie-Flom Center and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics will be co-sponsoring a day-long symposium organized by Dr. David Korn on institutional financial conflicts of interest in research universities. The speaker line-up is incredible, including Derek Bok and Zeke…
By Erin Talati As Holly Lynch describes in her recent post, the upcoming election brings a number of bioethics questions directly to the public. Two of the three ballot questions in Massachusetts invite discussion and debate on the controversial issues of physician-assisted suicide and the medical use of marijuana. The introduction of these issues as…
By Holly Fernandez Lynch Next Tuesday, those of us registered in Massachusetts will have the opportunity to vote on “Question 2” – prescribing medication to end life, otherwise known as physician-assisted suicide. As described by the state secretary, “This proposed law would allow a physician licensed in Massachusetts to prescribe medication, at a terminally ill…
By Suzanne M. Rivera, Ph.D. In August of 2011, the Public Health Service updated its rules to address the kind of financial conflicts of interests that can undermine (or appear to undermine) integrity in research. The new rules, issued under the ungainly title, “Responsibility of Applicants for Promoting Objectivity in Research for which Public Health…
By I. Glenn Cohen Last week, I sat on a panel at the Mid-Atlantic Law and Society Association, with my wonderful colleagues Kim Mutcherson, Gaia Bernstein, Rene Almeling, and Cynthia Daniels on sperm donor anonymity. [NB: as in most of my work I will use the term “donor” because it is used in common parlance…
Monday, November 5, 2012 12-1:30 pm Austin Hall, Room 111 Harvard Law School On July 3, 2012, FDA approved OraQuick, the first at-home HIV test available for sale directly to consumers, allowing individuals to self-test and receive confidential results in about 20 minutes. Then on July 16, FDA approved once-daily Truvada, an already-approved HIV therapy, as the…
By Katie Kraschel It was an exciting time to attend the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in San Diego this week. Just before the meeting, ASRM reclassified cryopreservation of oocytes for future use, removing the procedure’s “experimental” label. The possibility of increased uptake of this procedure raises many ethical issues (some…
By The Petrie-Flom Center It’s Friday again! And here’s this week’s (slightly edited) version of the Yale Friday Newsletter. Enjoy.
By Arthur Caplan Fixing genes using cloning technique is worth the ethical risk A team of scientists at the Oregon National Primate Research Center and the Oregon Health & Science University are reporting a remarkable advance in the treatment of inherited genetic disease in the journal Nature. They show it is possible to repair a tiny part…
