By Ching-Fu Lin [See Part I here.] In response to the melamine-tainted milk scandal in 2008, China replaced its outdated Food Hygiene Act with the Food Safety Law, which came into effect in 2009. The 2009 Food Safety Law includes provisions on risk assessment methods, establishment of a food safety committee, mandatory product recall requirements,…
By Scott Burris The rising public and legislative awareness of opioid overdose has been a case study in the twists and turns of culture, risk perception and the role of evidence in policy making. An interesting case study, which does not mean I understand what happened or why. I first got involved in overdose through…
By The Petrie-Flom Center The Petrie-Flom Center has released the description and call for abstracts for its 2014 Annual Conference: “Behavioral Economics, Law, and Health Policy.” The conference will be held at Harvard Law School on May 2 and 3, 2014, and seeks to address the following questions: Are there features unique to health and…
By Scott Burris Christopher Robertson recently posted here a semi-facetious suggestion of things that Democrats could ask for once the shut-down and the debt-ceiling dance turns into real bargaining. (How sad that this has to be seen as an optimistic statement.) That’s a good idea. I think we should all join in populating the health policy…
By Ching-Fu Lin Why should we be concerned about China’s food safety problem? A recent opinion by Adam Minter on Bloomberg offers yet another tough criticism on China’s food system: “For more than a decade, China has earned a reputation as one of the world’s worst food-safety offenders.” Melamine-tainted milk, rat meat sold as lamb, recycled “gutter oil” for…
By Efthimios Parasidis In the midst of “the world’s worst and fastest-spreading cholera epidemic“, with more than 685,000 infected and approximately 8,400 dead, five Haitian families are suing the United Nations in federal court in the Southern District of New York. The families are seeking $2.2 billion for the Haitian government’s relief efforts and unspecified…
Harvard High-Impact Philanthropy presents Effective Altruism or Mobilization for Institutional Reform? a lecture by Thomas Pogge Director of the Global Justice Program and Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs, Yale University Wednesday, October 9, 8 PM Sever 214 Professor Pogge will discuss whether some institutional reform efforts may be as effective or more effective…
By The Petrie-Flom Center Not sure how all the disciplines of public health function or work together? Are you interested in a brief overview of Public Health? LOOK NO FURTHER! The Harvard School of Public Health Post-Doctoral Association, Harvard Medical School Curriculum Fellows, and Harvard Global Health Institute have joined forces to organize a…
By Arthur Caplan Art Caplan has co-authored a new article, with Nirav R. Shah, published online today by JAMA. In “Managing the Human Toll Caused by Seasonal Influenza: New York State’s Mandate to Vaccinate or Mask,” Caplan and Shah discuss New York’s new mandate that health care personnel who have not been vaccinated against the…
By Scott Burris Take-no-prisoners politics has been succeeded by hostage-taking politics. The metaphor could go a few ways, but in the most concrete sense the hostages are you, our friends and colleagues who work for the public’s health as federal civil servants. You, who often accept smaller salaries and more spartan working conditions than you…
