By Chris Robertson July has been a busy month for those following the controversy around off-label promotion of drugs and devices. As many on this blog know, federal law requires that prior to marketing any drug or device, companies must prove to the FDA’s satisfaction that it is safe and effective for all intended uses.…
By Holly Fernandez Lynch In response to the religious objections levied against the contraceptives coverage mandate at issue in Hobby Lobby, Zubik, and gobs of other cases, many have argued that this was really a matter of subjugating women – not about religion per se. Well, now we have a test case: Vermont’s governor just signed…
By Holly Fernandez Lynch After the 2014 SCOTUS decision in Hobby Lobby, in which a closely-held for-profit employer won the argument that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act protected it against enforcement of the government’s contraceptives coverage mandate, all eyes have been on what SCOTUS would do in response to a challenge to the very…
By Wendy Parmet This new post by Wendy Parmet appears on the Health Affairs Blog as part of a series stemming from the Fourth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review event held at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 29, 2016. On February 3, 2016 the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit agreed to rehear the appeal inWollschlaeger…
By Gregory M. Lipper Although the biggest abortion-related news last week came from the U.S. Supreme Court, a Missouri state senator (turned Attorney General candidate) took the prize for most bizarre. Senator Kurt Schaefer—chairman of the Missouri Senate’s interim “Committee on the Sanctity of Life”—wrote a stern letter to the University of Missouri; he suggested that…
By Holly Fernandez Lynch Perhaps foreshadowed by the dissent in the 10th Circuit that I wrote about here, the 8th Circuit has now officially launched a circuit split regarding the legal validity of the accommodation that allows modified compliance/objection to the contraceptives coverage mandate. Unlike the seven other circuits to have considered the question since Hobby…
By Ryan Abbott Government regulation of off-label promotion by pharmaceutical companies is now an important First Amendment issue. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has historically restricted truthful and non-misleading speech by pharmaceutical companies under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). The FDCA prohibits introducing “misbranded” products into interstate commerce. The FDA has interpreted…
By Christopher Robertson Co-blogged with University of Arizona Fellow, Jonathan Loe Breathlessly, many news outlets reported yesterday that Kim Kardashian West was in trouble with the FDA for misleading social media advertising of the drug Diclegis. For example, the reliably hyperbolic Daily Mail led with “Kim Kardashian slammed by FDA.” As followers of this blog…
The Food and Drug Law Journal is pleased to announce a forthcoming symposium—Constitutional Challenges to the Regulation of Food, Drugs, Medical Devices, Cosmetics, and Tobacco Products—to be held at the Georgetown University Law Center (GULC) on Friday, October 30, 2015, and co-sponsored by the Food and Drug Law Institute and GULC’s O’Neill Institute for National…
By I. Glenn Cohen Given that it was the subject of my first ever blog post on Bill of Health, I am very pleased to share my new paper: “Are All Abortions Equal? Should There Be Exceptions to the Criminalization of Abortion for Rape and Incest?” which has just been published in the Journal of…
