By Tara Sklar At the Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI) 2018 Annual Conference, the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, Scott Gottlieb, gave the Keynote Address to kick-off the largest turnout yet for this event of over 900 attendees. Commissioner Gottlieb’s remarks started off with how previous FDA Commissioners used this opportunity to recap the…
By Benjamin Hartung, JD, Joshua Waimberg, JD, and Nicolas Wilhelm, JD While brain injuries and studies associated with professional football get the majority of media attention, student athletes, especially young football and soccer players, are also at risk for similar brain injuries. Each year, as many as 300,000 young people suffer from traumatic brain injuries…
By Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) is a global initiative of UNICEF and the World Health Organization aimed at promoting hospital policies that encourage and support breastfeeding. Baby-Friendly USA, the organization primarily responsibile for implementing BFHI in the United States, has outlined 10 evidence-based practices that hospitals…
By Brad Segal I just watched the movie Concussion (2015) as an assignment for one of my bioethics courses. The movie is about a physician, Dr. Bennet Omalu, as he unravels the association between playing in NFL and an acquired neurodegenerative disease, a condition he calls, “chronic traumatic encephalopathy” (CTE). At one point Dr. Omalu tries to convince…
By John Tingle The CQC (The Care Quality Commission) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England. They make sure that health and social care services provided to people are safe, effective, compassionate,…
By Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 6.4 million US children 4-17 years old have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The percentage of US children diagnosed with ADHD has increased by 3-5 percent per year since the 1990s. Relatedly, the percentage…
By Robert Kinscherff I recently attended a presentation on Fetal Pain: An Update on the Science and Legal Implications, jointly sponsored by the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior (Massachusetts General Hospital) and the Petrie-Flom Center (Harvard Law School). Presenters were Amanda Pustilnik, JD (University of Maryland School of Law) and Maureen Strafford, MD (Tufts…
By Elizabeth Guo Last week, Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) placed a hold on the Senate’s nomination of Robert Califf’s as head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The move was less against Califf and more as political leverage against FDA’s approval of OxyContin. In August 2015, FDA approved OxyContin, a prescription painkiller, for pediatric…
By Claire E. Wakefield, Lucy V. Hanlon, Katherine M. Tucker, Andrea F. Patenaude, Christina Signorelli, Jordana K. McLoone and Richard J. Cohn Genetics research often pushes the boundaries of science, and by the far-reaching nature of genetic information, pushes us out of our comfort zones to consider new psychosocial, ethical, and legal scenarios. Conducting genetic…
By Maayan Sudai Ashley is young woman who was born in 1997 with a severe mental and physical disability that prevented her from ever eating, walking or talking by herself. Her mental capacity was also not expected to develop further than that of an infant. In 2004, When she was six and a half years…
