Current Legal Issues in HIV/AIDS Work Thursday, March 27, 2014, 12:00pm Wasserstein Hall 1019, Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA More than 30 years have passed since AIDS first appeared in the United States. Today the CDC estimates that 1.1 million Americans are living with HIV/AIDS, and each year 50,000 Americans are newly diagnosed….
By Christopher Robertson Today, there are two big stories that relate to the “institutional corruption” of medicine (aka conflicts of interests). For those who have been working long and hard on these issues, they are cause for hope. The needle does move. First, one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies, GlaxoSmithKline, has decided that it will stop…
By Scott Burris Working with Corey Davis of the Network for Public Health Law, PHLR has completed and posted updated longitudinal datasets of state laws authorizing naloxone distribution and creating “Good Samaritan” immunity for callers reporting a drug overdose to 911. Take a look at www.lawatlas.org. On the theory that an image beats a few…
By Art Caplan Are we ever capable of laying a stupid idea to rest in America? Apparently not. The latest tempest in the ever-resurrecting world of solutions to the shortage of organs is donation by executed prisoners. The Governor of Ohio held up a plan to execute a man on death row when he requested…
By Michelle Meyer On October 2, in the midst of the government shutdown—either HHS somehow managed to convince itself that the rule was “necessary for the protection of life” or, more likely, it had already been scheduled for printing—HHS quietly published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. The proposed rule would effectively moot the recent Ninth Circuit…
By Matthew L Baum What are the implications of advances in brain science for the justice system? This was the topic of a panel discussion held Tuesday at MIT’s McGovern Institute and moderated by Alan Alda in conjunction with the premier of his new PBS special, “Brains on Trial”. The discussion ranged from using fMRI for lie-detection…
By Scott Burris The Global Commission on HIV and the Law recently conducted a web discussion of steps to implement the Commission’s recommendations for better harmonizing law and HIV control. One of the questions for discussion was: What are examples of innovative or non-traditional partnerships that can be used to strategically advance human-rights based responses…
By Scott Burris In documenting how often public health law research does influence legislation, I’ve used syringe exchange programs as an example of evidence NOT guiding policy. Despite the consensus in health research that increasing access to sterile syringes has helped reduce HIV, state drug paraphernalia laws, and pharmacy regulations remain a barrier, as does…
Bill of Health contributor Dov Fox has a new op-ed at the Huffington Post on “junk” DNA and the future of genetic privacy in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling, in Maryland v. King, that police may collect DNA from people under arrest. Fox argues, The next great controversy over forensic DNA won’t have anything to…
By Michele Goodwin Less than an hour ago, Indianapolis prosecutor, Mr. Terry Curry agreed to drop first degree murder charges against Bei Bei Shuai in an agreement that required her to plead to a misdemeanor. The case was a month away from trial in what would have been the first prosecution of a pregnant woman…
