Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics

In the Boston area? Join us Monday evening to hear I. Glenn Cohen, Judith Daar, O. Carter Snead, Julia Hesse, Leslie Meltzer Henry, Insoo Hyun, and Antonio Regalado discuss embryo law and ethics. Specific topics include disposition of cryopreserved embryos and the development of lab-grown “embryo models” which are created from pluripotent stem cells and mimic early human embryo development.

Registration is required: https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/events/details/hot-topics-in-embryo-law-and-ethics/

🔦 STUDENT FELLOW SPOTLIGHT🔦 Tai Dinger is a law student and a PhD candidate in Health Policy, interested in the intersections of law, economics, and decision sciences, the study of how we [should] make decisions. His snow shoveling blog post went viral, and he also wrote about NYC Mayor Mamdani’s health insurance policies, surprise fees for ambulance rides, capital punishment and IQ, and unsafe water in agricultural areas.

To read his blogs from this year: https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/author/tai-dinger/

RSVP to join us in person June 15 for this expert panel discussion at Harvard Law School, kicking off the following day’s livestreamed annual conference. Hear from I. Glenn Cohen, Judith Daar, O. Carter Snead, Julia Hesse, Leslie Meltzer Henry, Insoo Hyun, and Antonio Regalado on embryo law and ethics. https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/events/details/hot-topics-in-embryo-law-and-ethics/

Polygenic risk scores (PGSs), which provide genome-wide estimates of disease risk and may help indicate effective preventive care for an individual, are generating both excitement about potential benefits and critical questions about privacy, discrimination, and the limits of existing legal protections. In a new article published in the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, Jin K. Park, Susannah Baruch, and I. Glenn Cohen examine whether current U.S. anti-discrimination laws are adequate for an era of increasingly sophisticated genetic prediction.

The article focuses on the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), enacted in 2008. While GINA protects individuals from discrimination in employment and health insurance based on genetic information, the authors argue that polygenic scoring introduces new gray areas — especially if employers learn of workers’ elevated future disease risks or employees seek workplace accommodations to reduce those risks before symptoms appear.

The authors explore to what extent existing laws like GINA and the Americans with Disabilities Act may protect workers from being fired because of genetic risk. They also discuss the particular difficulties in using the law to obtain workplace accommodations for those with risks highlighted by the scores.

The piece ultimately asks whether current legal frameworks are sufficient for the next generation of genomic medicine — and what policymakers may need to do to ensure that people can benefit from advances in genetic testing without fear of discrimination.

“We hope for responsible, deliberate, and participatory consideration of how to ensure broad benefits from innovation in genetic medicine and disease prevention,” write Park, Baruch, and Cohen.

Read the full article here: https://academic.oup.com/jlb/article/13/1/lsaf016/8678057?utm_source=authortollfreelink&utm_campaign=jlb&utm_medium=email&guestAccessKey=

According to a new article in The New England Journal of Medicine AI, the proliferation of ambient AI platforms has resulted in a precarious legal landscape of privacy concerns and inconsistent regulations. Several different state “eavesdropping” statues together form a patchwork of ambient listening consent requirements, resulting in lawsuits and confusion.

The authors, Taylor Anderson of Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), Michael S. Sinha of Saint Louis University School of Law, I. Glenn Cohen of Harvard Law School, and R. Logan Jones of Oregon Health and Science University, point out the need for increasing transparency and mitigating risk, calling for active consent verification, clinician education on legal risks, and responsible platform design.

"The advent of litigation involving clinical ambient AI illustrates an urgent need for updated legal and regulatory guidance to address its unique risks,” wrote Anderson, Sinha, Cohen, and Jones. "Bridging the gap between the limited protections of HIPAA and the current patchwork of state recording statutes will require both federal action and institutional leadership.”

Click to read more: https://ai.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/AIp2600203

Please register to join us in-person on June 15, or virtually June 16, to learn more about embryo law and ethics. Sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center with support from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine Center for Policy & Leadership and the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund at Harvard University.

June 15 panel discussion: https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/events/details/hot-topics-in-embryo-law-and-ethics/
June 16 livestream: https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/events/details/2026-annual-conference-embryo-law-and-ethics/

🔦 STUDENT FELLOW SPOTLIGHT🔦 As a Petrie-Flom Student Fellow, Julia Etkin has written on topics at the intersection of ethics and equity, including AI chatbots dispensing medical advice, New York’s new Medical Aid in Dying law, regulating psychedelics as food, digital twins, and abortifacient ideology. We wish her all the best after graduating from Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics this spring.

To read her blogs from this year: https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/author/julia-etkin/

On the surface, it seems logical that a person experiencing substance use disorder would benefit from immediate, forced abstinence from drugs when incarcerated. The science shows the opposite, as Javier R. Mesa writes on the Bill of Health blog.

Neuroscience research makes clear that addicted brains cannot just return to normal after an abrupt cut-off from drugs. Inmates may experience anxiety, irritability, tremors, lethargy, fatigue, or digestive complications. “Brains need help as they recover from drug addiction, and inmates have a legal right to access appropriate treatment,” writes Mesa, a Dana Foundation Neurotech Justice Fellow with the Petrie-Flom Center.

Read his post: https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2026/04/28/prisons-as-incubators-of-drug-craving-how-incarceration-worsens-addiction-outcomes/

The newest DOJ scrutiny of medical school admissions may quietly shrink the physician pipeline when the U.S. is already facing shortages, write Gregory Curfman and Linda Brubaker, both of JAMA.

By restricting how medical schools admit students, and by adding burdens that may limit expansion, the investigation risks producing fewer (and less well-distributed) physicians over time. "There is strong evidence that individual and population health can be optimized when the physician workforce reflects a range of life experiences, values, attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs,” write the authors on Bill of Health.

To read the post: https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2026/04/24/medical-education-and-health-care-in-a-just-society/