Caleb Brown of Cato interviews me:
Official DNA database use and obligatory testing is now sure to expand; where might it be headed? “If states are using DNA to verify paternity on births to underage women, why not use it to verify paternity on all births?” [Glenn Reynolds] “The 2018 Ezra Klein column on how it’s insane we’re not testing all this DNA for public health purposes writes itself.” [@andrewmgrossman] Michelle Meyer also has some ideas. Earlier here.
Asking existing employees about their family medical history might offer safety benefits in the workplace, both by indicating vulnerabilities that might be countered by protective measures, and by helping to distinguish ailments with a strong congenital influence from those that might signal occupational disease. However, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says that such questioning is “genetic discrimination” and unlawful under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which became law in 2009. Fabricut, a decorative fabrics firm, will pay $50,000 to settle charges that it improperly asked about family medical history and also that it improperly engaged in disability discrimination by refusing to employ as a clerk a woman it regarded as having carpal tunnel syndrome. [EEOC press release]
They were seeking a second opinion on whether the baby needed heart surgery, and didn’t trust the care they were getting from Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento, so parents Anna and Alex Nikolayev went over to Kaiser Permanente to get a second opinion. Police and Child Protective Services then showed up at their house to seize five-month-old Sammy. “A judge ordered Monday that the child be moved to Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, a decision which the Nikolayevs consider a win,” and also ordered that they obey all medical advice. [KSL, Today, Good Morning America (auto-plays)]
A New Jersey man claims that he was injured by an insomnia therapy recommended on TV by the high-profile Dr. Mehmet Oz, involving the use of microwave-heated raw rice in a bag to warm the feet. Instead the man got third-degree burns, according to his lawsuit. [Associated Press/NJ.com]
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that a Duluth physician was not defamed by a contributor to a consumer-review site who criticized his bedside manner and referred to the doctor as a “real tool.” [Minneapolis Star-Tribune, ABA Journal, earlier here, etc.]
“In the topsy-turvy world of health care, doctors and hospitals have a very powerful influence on how you are treated,” he [a university investigator] said. [San Jose Mercury-News] Topsy-turvy indeed — who would have guessed such a thing? (& InsureBlog)
A unanimous Supreme Court has struck down a patent over diagnostic methods in medicine, the latest in a series of controversies over the bounds of patentable subject matter. [Mayo v. Prometheus Labs; Marcia Coyle/NLJ, SCOTUSBlog, Timothy Lee/ArsTechnica] As I noted last fall, my Cato Institute colleagues Ilya Shapiro, Jim Harper and Timothy Lee filed an amicus brief on behalf of the side that prevailed yesterday, arguing against the spread of “a dangerous exception to traditional patent law… the Court should reject medical-diagnostic patents as impermissibly restricting the freedom of thought.”
Thanks to reader Hugo Cunningham for spotting this in a new Boston Globe report on the failure of the Massachusetts state medical board to post physicians’ disciplinary problems and other performance issues online:
Another major omission has resulted from a Catch-22-like requirement in state law. Russell Aims, the … chief of staff
[of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine], said the board used to post digital copies of its disciplinary orders [for medical malpractice]. But an online accessibility law requires that documents be available in a text-to-speech format for the visually impaired.Because the PDF format of the disciplinary records is not compatible with text-to-speech software, Aims said, the law dictates that such records cannot appear in the database. If the visually impaired cannot access the information, then no one can.
A Newburyport, Mass. attorney formerly with the big personal injury firm of Kreindler and Kreindler has been suspended from practice for two years “after Suffolk County judges ruled she falsely claimed she was also a medical doctor.” The firm reportedly was unaware of the imposture (no one checked, then? ) and cited her nonexistent credential in its promotional materials. [Newburyport News]