Patrick O’Leary

  • Read more: Does FDA Need a Dietary Supplement User Fee Act?

    Does FDA Need a Dietary Supplement User Fee Act?

    By Elizabeth Guo Dietary supplements are dominating headlines these days – and not in a good way. Last Wednesday, Nevada officials found basketball star Lamar Odom unconscious at a brothel after taking cocaine along , a sexual enhancement dietary supplement. That same week, the New England Journal of Medicine released an article finding that dietary…

  • Read more: TOMORROW: Second Annual Health Law Year in P/Review

    TOMORROW: Second Annual Health Law Year in P/Review

    Please join us for our second annual Health Law Year in P/Review event, co-sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the New England Journal of Medicine. The conference will be held in Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East C at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 31, 2014, from 8:30am to 5:00pm. This year we will…

  • Read more: 1/31: Second Annual Health Law Year in P/Review

    1/31: Second Annual Health Law Year in P/Review

    Please join us for our second annual Health Law Year in P/Review event, co-sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the New England Journal of Medicine. The conference will be held in Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East C at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 31, 2014, from 8:30am to 5:00pm. This year we will…

  • Read more: 1/31: Second Annual Health Law Year in P/Review conference

    1/31: Second Annual Health Law Year in P/Review conference

    Please join us for our second annual Health Law Year in P/Review event, co-sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the New England Journal of Medicine. The conference will be held in Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East C at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 31, 2014, from 8:30am to 5:00pm. This…

  • Read more: On Scientific Journals as a Bulwark Against Research Misconduct

    On Scientific Journals as a Bulwark Against Research Misconduct

    By Patrick O’Leary I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how our society regulates the integrity of scientific research in an era of fierce competition for diminishing grants and ultracompetitive academic appointments. When I shared a draft paper on this topic a few weeks ago, several colleagues urged me to think more about the role…

  • Read more: Time Magazine on Solving Health Care’s #1 Problem: “All the Prices Are Too Damn High”

    Time Magazine on Solving Health Care’s #1 Problem: “All the Prices Are Too Damn High”

    By Patrick O’Leary The cover story of the March 4, 2013 issue of Time Magazine is a piece by Steven Brill titled Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us. The article has apparently made a pretty big splash: in an interview (Part 2, Part 3) with Brill last week, Jon Stewart of Comedy Central’s…

  • Read more: Irresponsible Health Reporting? The N.Y. Times and the Perpetuation of Chemophobia

    Irresponsible Health Reporting? The N.Y. Times and the Perpetuation of Chemophobia

    By Patrick O’Leary When I read Susannah Meadows’s article in last week’s New York Times Magazine, The Boy with a Thorn in His Joints, I was at a bit of a loss how to respond. The article is Meadows’s account of dealing with her son’s juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and describes how, wary of the side effects of…

  • Read more: Two Reflections on Health Law Scholarship

    Two Reflections on Health Law Scholarship

    By Patrick O’Leary Last spring I had the chance to work as a research assistant for Marc Rodwin, a Lab Fellow at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, reading through hundreds (perhaps thousands) of pages of Congressional hearing transcripts from the 1960s and 1970s relating to the federal regulation of drugs. In reading the…

  • Read more: Regulatory Concepts in the News, Part I: FDA Efficacy Standards for Old Drugs

    Regulatory Concepts in the News, Part I: FDA Efficacy Standards for Old Drugs

    By Patrick O’Leary While reading some of the great articles from the health section of the New York Times over the holidays it struck me that such articles, in their need to be concise and accessible, often give only passing treatment to regulatory concepts that can be fundamental to the story. Accordingly, I thought it…

  • Read more: The Future of Biomedical Research Funding

    The Future of Biomedical Research Funding

    By Patrick O’Leary As I’ve written about previously on this blog, the consequences for the FDA of budget sequestration under the Budget Control Act of 2011 could be fairly severe (as well as raise some interesting legal questions). In a recent Online First piece for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Hamilton Moses…