By Arthur Caplan Art Caplan has a series of new opinion pieces out on the WHO ethics advisory committee meeting that approved the use of experimental drugs to treat patients ill with Ebola. He suggests deeper exploration of issues of informed consent, corporate responsibility, and resource allocation in this blog post for The Health Care…
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 Timo Minssen Last week I blogged about recent publications concerning the global battle against anti-microbial resistance (AMR). I did not mention a recent paper published in the June 2014 issue of Nature, which describes how European and U.S. researchers and authorities are increasingly considering clinical research in unconventional areas to fight AMR. The news-report…
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 Arthur Caplan Art Caplan, and his coauthor Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, have a guest column over at Daily Kos on the NY bill that would allow adolescents to receive treatment – including preventive treatment like vaccines for HPV – against a sexually transmitted disease without their parents’ or guardians’ knowledge or consent. Take a look.
By Ross D. Silverman, JD, MPH (Twitter: @phlu) Fairbanks School of Public Health and McKinney School of Law, Indiana University, Indianapolis. This has been a big year for outbreaks of Vaccine-Preventable Illnesses (VPIs) in the United States. While we are only halfway through 2014, there have been more measles cases this year than we have…
By Holly Fernandez Lynch The NY Times is reporting that the CIA has banned its “operational use” of vaccination programs, which came to light in the context of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. As if it weren’t already hard enough to launch successful vaccination campaigns (domestically and globally), this vaccination+spying taint has surely added further…
By Jennifer S. Bard The news about the return of dangerous “childhood” illnesses gets worse and worse. Columbus, Ohio reports an outbreak of 225 cases—with over 50% students at Ohio State University. It is probably no coincidence that Ohio State recommends but does not require students (outside of those in healthcare settings) be vaccinated in order…
By I. Glenn Cohen [Note: This post is meant to be provocative and press a public policy question in the most thought-provoking way possible. Losing a loved one is among the most heart-wrenching experiences in a life time and my heart goes out to all those with loved ones on the flight waiting for answers.…
