Bioethics Forum Essay
Charging Smokers Higher Health Insurance Rates: Is it Ethical?
Smoking-related illnesses cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars a year in health care expenditures and lost productivity, and claim hundreds of thousands of lives.” Given the enormous...Read “Charging Smokers Higher Health Insurance Rates: Is it Ethical?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Making an Example of Martin Shkreli
Last month, the New York Times reported that the price of a 62-year old little-known drug, Daraprim (pyrimethamine), rose overnight from $18 to $750 a pill. About 100 pills are needed to treat...Bioethics Forum Essay
Why EpiPen Prices Are No Shock
High drug prices are a fact of modern American life. They are not, however, equally high for all Americans. Their magnitude depends on whether you are un-, under-, or adequately...Bioethics Forum Essay
EpiPens and the Sale of Fear
On September 21, Heather Bresch, CEO of Mylan, took heat at a Congressional hearing about high EpiPen prices. EpiPens are definitely overpriced – but they are also overprescribed. An EpiPen is...Bioethics Forum Essay
Telemedicine Needs Ethical Guidelines
Telemedicine is becoming more widespread. This is care at a distance, where patient and clinician are connected by information technology that may include video, audio, and monitoring equipment linked by...Bioethics Forum Essay
After the Election Bioethics Faces a Rocky Road
Academic bioethics has never been popular with Republicans. Libertarians dislike academic bioethics because it seems too elitist and anti-free market. Religious thinkers worry it is technocratic, soulless and crassly utilitarian....Bioethics Forum Essay
The 21st Century Cures Act Sparks Values Debate
On December 13th, President Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act, a bipartisan, multidimensional health research and development bill. The act allocates $4.8 billion to the National Institutes of Health...Bioethics Forum Essay
A Right to Seek Payment for One’s Tissue
After much anticipation, on April 22, HBO debuted The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a film based on Rebecca Skloot’s bestselling book, starring Oprah Winfrey. Lacks’s cells provided the foundation...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Score is Even
Three years ago, a small pharmaceutical company with a big agenda created a fake feminist group so that they could get a bad drug approved by the Food and Drug...Bioethics Forum Essay
Masked Marketing: Pharmaceutical Company Funding of ADHD Patient Advocacy Groups
In 1971, the United Nations passed a resolution prohibiting its member nations from advertising psychotropic drugs to the general public. More than 40 years later, this resolution has done little...Read “Masked Marketing: Pharmaceutical Company Funding of ADHD Patient Advocacy Groups”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Fentanyl at Your Door: Who are Pain Groups Advocating For?
In February, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) published a report that revealed the unsettling relationship between opioid manufacturers and pain advocacy groups. Focusing on five opioid manufacturers, Purdue, Janssen, Depomed, Insys,...Read “Fentanyl at Your Door: Who are Pain Groups Advocating For?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Addyi Rises Again
Addyi, a drug that made a splash when it was approved in the summer of 2015 as the first “female Viagra,” is back. Its rise, fall, and rise again is...Bioethics Forum Essay
Let the Sun Shine into the Medical Ivory Tower
In 2012, I coauthored a case report about the successful use of dietary supplements in treating a case of male infertility in the American Family Physician. Before it was published,...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center’s Rosemary Gibson Honored for Enhancing Health Care Quality
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Hastings Center News
Award-Winning Essay: How Can Mobile Apps Improve Clinical Trials and Safeguard Participants?
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Hastings Center News
Helping Seriously Ill Patients Access “Last Resort” Medicines
The Compassionate Use Advisory Committee, headed by Hastings Center Fellow Arthur Caplan, of NYU Langone, received the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the Food and Drug Administration’s Innovation Award. The committee was recognized for transforming how expanded access requests, also known as compassionate use requests, are granted by drug developers.Read “Helping Seriously Ill Patients Access “Last Resort” Medicines”
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Scholars Respond to Prison Sentence of Researcher Who Created First Gene-Edited Babies
The Compassionate Use Advisory Committee, headed by Hastings Center Fellow Arthur Caplan, of NYU Langone, received the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the Food and Drug Administration’s Innovation Award. The committee was recognized for transforming how expanded access requests, also known as compassionate use requests, are granted by drug developers.Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Scholar on How Some Countries Control Health Spending
Although the U.S. has the highest health care prices in the world, the specific mechanisms commonly used by other countries to set and update prices are often overlooked, with a...Read “Hastings Center Scholar on How Some Countries Control Health Spending”
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Should the FDA Have Approved the New Alzheimer’s Drug?
Should Patients Take It? Monday, July 12, 2021 The Food and Drug Administration’s accelerated approval of a new Alzheimer’s drug has created a firestorm of praise and outrage. Dissenters include...Read “Should the FDA Have Approved the New Alzheimer’s Drug?”
Hastings Center News
TRANSCRIPT – Breakthrough or Breakdown: Should the FDA Have Approved the New Alzheimer’s Drug?
[Transcript created by voice recognition] Danielle Pacia, The Hastings Center Hello and welcome to Breakthrough or Breakdown. Should the FDA have approved the new Alzheimer’s drug, a Hastings Center conversation?...Bioethics Forum Essay
Mark Cuban’s Innovative Pharmacy: A Band-Aid on Drug Prices
Billionaire Mark Cuban and physician Alex Oshmyansky recently launched the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company (MCCPDC), an online pharmacy that sells generic prescription medicines at significantly lower prices than other sources. But the acclaim for the pharmacy may eclipse attention to the longstanding structural problems of the pharmaceutical industry and MCCPDC’s role in it.Read “Mark Cuban’s Innovative Pharmacy: A Band-Aid on Drug Prices”
Bioethics Forum Essay
In Search of an Ethical Constraint on Hospital Revenue
Hospitals' tactics for maximizing revenue may be legal, but they raise ethical concerns.Read “In Search of an Ethical Constraint on Hospital Revenue”