By Casey Thomson The flu, gun control, and legal action against the FDA – all amongst our Twitter feeds this past week. Read on for more: Frank Pasquale (@FrankPasquale) retweeted a link to the FDA’s current legal trouble concerning their failure to disclose antibiotic resistance data. The Government Accountability Project (GAP) is accusing…
By Elizabeth Sepper 2013 is rife with reports of the terrible human costs of the flu. Emergency rooms nationwide have been overwhelmed. Art Caplan’s great blog post urges doctors to educate patients that the flu vaccine is not just for their benefit. He tells healthcare providers to send a clear message by getting the flu…
By The Petrie-Flom Center The Harvard University Program in Ethics and Health announces its annual conference, Universal Health Coverage in Low-Income Countries: Ethical Issues, to be held in Boston on April 18-19, 2013. Description Until very recently, universal coverage (“UC”) has been achieved in the health systems primarily in the wealthiest countries. Though there have…
By Casey Thomson Due to the string of December holidays and some traveling by the round-up author, this post belatedly summarizes tweets from the end of 2012 to the beginning days of the new year. The round-up will resume a regular schedule following the conclusion of this week. Read below for this (extended) round-up: Frank…
By Art Caplan [cross-posted on MedScape] This flu season is proving to be a doozy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta say that this is one of the worst flu seasons ever. The agency reported severe flu cases in 46 states during the last week of December 2012. Eighteen states are…
By Wendy Parmet The Supreme Court’s decision last week to grant cert in AID v. Alliance for Open Society International, demonstrates anew the importance of First Amendment jurisprudence to public health protection. In recent years, it has sometimes seemed as if the First Amendment has become the most significant legal obstacle to effective public health…
By Tom Holder [Ed. Note: A few weeks ago, we had a post comparing the protections offered to humans and animals used in research, and it prompted quite a stir. We thought the issues merited more discussion from both sides, and therefore solicited blog posts from two divergent perspectives: Theodora Capaldo, President of the New England Anti-Vivisection Society and Tom Holder,…
By The Petrie-Flom Center
By Scott Burris The main contests (a summary of previous posts): A lot of people in public health practice seem to be (appropriately) concerned about our public health infrastructure – the agencies within public health systems where day to day work is done. Public health infrastructure tends to get taken for granted and neglected. Core…
By Jonathan J. Darrow In a well-researched, recent post, Patrick O’Leary addresses the FDA’s efficacy requirements as applied to an old drug, Acthar (corticotropin), that was first approved in 1952 and granted an orphan designation in 2010 for the treatment of infantile spasms. The initial approval therefore occurred before the Drug Amendments of 1962, which…
