By Timo Minssen In Part II of this blog on legal issues relating to the revival of phage therapy I discussed the US Supreme Court’s decisions in Myriad and Prometheus, which might present major obstacles to the patentability of phage-related technology (a more detailed analysis of the Myriad and Prometheus decisions is available here). Yet,…
By Timo Minssen Three days ago I commented on a couple of legal issues raised in the recent Nature report “Phage therapy gets revitalized” by Sara Reardon. One challenge concerns the reluctance of pharma companies to broadly invest in the development of phage therapies. As pointed out in the report, this does of course very…
By Arthur Caplan Art Caplan has a new opinion piece on NBC News responding to the recent media coverage of Ebola. He makes the case that although this has been the worst recorded outbreak of the disease, citizens of developed countries have little reason to panic: Ebola is not going to run amok in downtown Boston, Cape May or…
By Timo Minssen One of my previous blogs discussed the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). I concluded that antimicrobial resistance is a growing and complex threat involving multifaceted legal, socio-economic and scientific aspects. This requires sustained and coordinated action on both global and local levels. A recent medical review on drug resistant tuberculosis supports…
By Deborah Cho A recent data brief summarizing a national survey spanning from 2005-2012 on the perception of weight status in U.S. children and adolescents highlights one major finding — many children and adolescents who are overweight or obese don’t know it. Key findings were that about 81% of overweight (defined as having age- and sex-specific BMI greater…
By Donald W. Light Based on https://www.ethics.harvard.edu/lab/blog/436-new-prescription-drugs-a-major-health-risk Few people know that new prescription drugs have a 1 in 5 chance of causing serious reactions after they have been approved. That is why expert physicians recommend not taking new drugs for at least five years unless patients have first tried better-established options and need to. Faster reviews…
By Nir Eyal On Wednesday, South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi announced that, as of January 2015, HIV-positive patients in the country would start receiving free antiretroviral treatment once their CD4 count fell below 500, instead of current threshold of less than 350. Some patient groups would start receiving antiretrovirals immediately upon being diagnosed with…
By I. Glenn Cohen I have a new article in JAMA this week, “Reconsideration of the Lifetime Ban on Blood Donation by Men Who Have Sex With Men,” co-authored with my former student Jeremy Feigenbaum and my frequent co-author Dr. Eli Adashi (former Dean of Medicine at Brown). In the article we show that…
By I. Glenn Cohen, Holly Fernandez Lynch, and Gregory Curfman Check out the “hot off the press” New England Journal of Medicine Perspectives piece “When Religious Freedom Clashes with Access to Care” by Petrie-Flom Faculty Director I. Glenn Cohen, Executive Director Holly Fernandez Lynch, and NEJM Executive Editor (and PFC Faculty Affiliate), Gregory Curfman. We review the…
By The Petrie-Flom Center Interested candidates should apply at www.childrenshospital.jobs. Temporary Clinical Ethicist The Clinical Ethicist provides formal and informal ethics consultations and collaborates with clinical teams, patients and families, managers, and consultants to address ethical issues in pediatric health care and research. Documents ethics activities. May participate in clinical ethics rounds and other educational activities. Requires…
