By Leslie Francis and Margaret Pabst Battin This post is part II of a two-part series on pandemic control strategies in response to COVID-19. New testing methods may allow us to avoid many of the inequities and injustices of the traditional methods of pandemic control, if we can deploy them quickly enough.
Cross-posted from Written Description, where it originally appeared on March 30, 2020. By Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Nicholson Price, Rachel Sachs, and Jacob Sherkow One of the dizzying stream of innovation and health law stories to emerge last week is Oracle’s partnership with the White House to study unproven pharmaceuticals for treating COVID-19. We decided to unpack this story for ourselves and then…
Your life and the lives of many others may depend now on isolation, quarantine, cordon sanitaire, shelter in place, or physical distancing.
By Valerie Gutmann Koch, Govind Persad, and Wendy Netter Epstein On March 17, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Dr. Jeremy Faust, titled Make This Simple Change to Free Up Hospital Beds Now. In it, he argues that cities and states should “temporarily relax the legal standard of medical malpractice,” in order to encourage…
By Cansu Canca As coronavirus cases increase worldwide, institutions keep their communities informed with frequent updates—but only up to a point. They share minimal information such as number of cases, but omit the names of individuals and identifying information. Many institutions are legally obligated to protect individual privacy, but is this prohibition of transparency ethically…
By Alicia Ely Yamin and Ole F. Norheim Scholarly and official statements and publications regarding human rights during the current pandemic have largely reiterated the important lessons learned from HIV/AIDS, Zika and Ebola, such as: engagement with affected communities; combatting stigma and discrimination; ensuring access for the most vulnerable; accounting for gendered effects; and limiting…
The Journal of Law and the Biosciences (JLB) is soliciting essays, commentaries, or short articles for a special issue on “Law and Ethics in the Time of a Global Pandemic.” For this issue we especially encourage shorter pieces, of roughly 1500 to 5000 words. If any particular aspect of how this pandemic will affect some part…
By Brandon George and Nicolas P. Terry Introduction Earlier this month, Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse identified those with substance use disorder (SUD) as a particularly vulnerable population during the COVID-19 pandemic. She highlighted the negative effects of opioid or methamphetamine use on respiratory and pulmonary health in addition…
By Beatrice Brown Critical resources for handling the COVID-19 pandemic, including ventilators and ICU beds, are quickly becoming scarce in the US as the number and density of infections continue to rise. Leading bioethicists have crafted guidelines for the ethical rationing of these scarce resources during the pandemic. On March 16, The Hastings Center published…
By Stephen Wood The recommendations for healthy people who have symptoms consistent with COVID-19, the illness caused by the corona virus called SARS-Co-V2, is to stay at home, get plenty of rest, drink fluids and control fever and body-aches with a non-steroidal medication. For people with pre-existing medical conditions, the elderly or those with more…
