By Beatrice Brown A recent BMJ article has exposed ethical concerns with the informed consent process in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) large, randomized cluster trial of the world’s first licensed malaria vaccine, RTS,S, known as Mosquirix. The study is being conducted in Malawi, Ghana, and Kenya, and 720,000 children will receive the vaccine. The…
By Margaret Battin, Leslie Francis, Jay Jacobson, and Charles Smith What if, instead of closing airports, shutting down trains and buses, quarantining travelers from China, and enclosing 50 million people inside the city of Wuhan and Hubei province, we had a sophisticated technology that could identify travelers who might spread an emerging infectious disease? This…
Description When Misfortune Becomes Injustice (Stanford University Press, February 2020) surveys the progress and challenges faced in deploying human rights to advance health and social equality over the last thirty years, with a particular focus on women’s health and sexual and reproductive health and rights. Author and Petrie-Flom Center Senior Fellow Alicia Ely Yamin weaves…
By Ameet Sarpatwari, Charlie Lee, Frazer Tessema, and Aaron S. Kesselheim Each month, members of the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) review the peer-reviewed medical literature to identify interesting empirical studies, policy analyses, and editorials on health law and policy issues relevant to current or potential future work in the Division. Below are the abstracts/summaries…
By Patricia Illingworth and Wendy E. Parmet On May 19th of last year, Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez died of the flu while being held in a cell by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in south Texas. He was just 16, a migrant from Guatemala. Hours before his death, when his fever spiked to 103, a nurse suggested that…
By Govind Persad Imagine a Harvard MBA graduate trying to decide between jobs at Pfizer and at Snapchat. Both are immensely wealthy firms. Many of Pfizer’s products benefit global health. Snapchat’s are at best neutral and may even harm health. Yet many see Pfizer as distinctively culpable for global health deficits. These arguments often depend…
By Daniel Aaron In October, the Petrie-Flom Center hosted a conference of world-leading experts in HIV/AIDS to discuss one of the biggest public health successes in history: PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. PEPFAR was launched in 2003 in response to a burgeoning global epidemic of HIV. The program offered $2 billion annually,…
By John Tingle The Accident and Emergency (A&E), the Emergency Room, is the bellwether NHS speciality from which all the other clinical specialities appear to be judged. Long reported delays and missed targets in the A&E (Emergency Room) lead to a public, media clamoring that the NHS is a failing public service. The independent regulator…
Friday, October 4, the Petrie-Flom Center will host “Abortion Battles in Mexico and Beyond: The Role of Law and the Courts,” from 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. By Adriana Ortega Ortiz In Mexico, abortion is a state-law matter. It is considered a crime in…
Monday, October 7, the Petrie-Flom Center is co-sponsoring “15+ Years of PEPFAR: How U.S. Action on HIV/AIDS Has Changed Global Health,” from 8:30 AM to 6:00 PM. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. This event is cosponsored by the Harvard Global Health Institute, the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research, the Center for…
