Biotechnology

Phillip Longman in Mother Jones | 'Another Walter Reed-Type Scandal'

Communications — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 11:47:00 -0400

New America in the News:
In April, Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours, told the tech website ZDNet that the government "could wire Walter Reed or Bethesda (the two biggest military hospitals) for VistA in an afternoon. Technically, there's no big problem." In fact, VistA's code is so flexible that it's even been adapted for use in other countries. "Yet," said Longman, "there are DOD people who have built their careers on AHLTA and want people to switch to their system." LINK

Shannon Brownlee in BusinessWeek on Drug Companies

Communications — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:26:00 -0400

New America in the News:

...Some drug industry critics are not so surprised that advertising oversight has slackened. "The question is whether the industry has gotten better at complying with the rules or the FDA has gotten worse at enforcing them. It's probably a combination of the two," says Shannon Brownlee, author of the new book Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer...

The book describes how the industry fought the FDA to loosen ad restrictions on the basis of free speech, taking the battle all the way to the Supreme Court, and has since exploited the agency's rather lax rules to exert an unprecedented amount of marketing muscle. "The FDA has been beaten down by the drug industry," Brownlee says. And to great effect: Every dollar the drug industry spends on DTC advertising generates $4.20 in increased sales, Brownlee writes, outpacing the return of even the fast-food industry, which spends a similar amount on consumer advertising. Will those seeking to muzzle drug ads just give up? Don't count on it. Says study co-author Donohue, "As long as direct-to-consumer [advertising] is around and there are concerns about drug safety, there will be efforts to restrict it..."

For the complete article, please visit BusinessWeek's web site.

Beyond Bioethics

Communications — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
03/02/2007 - 11:45am

Beyond Bioethics, a new report by Dr. Francis Fukuyama and Dr. Franco Furger, provides the most comprehensive examination to date of legislative and/or regulatory answers to the challenges raised by human biotechnologies in the United States. The report's premise is that reaping the benefits of medical progress offered by biotechnology while preventing possible abuses requires that we create a new regulatory agency. Dr. Fukuyama and Dr. Furger discussed legislative developments at the national and international level and explore public attitudes towards controversial reproductive technologies.

Following their presentation, Richard Hayes of the Center for Genetics and Society, William Galston of The Brookings Institution, and Shannon Brownlee of New America Foundation discussed possible policy implications for biotechnology. Steven Clemons moderated a question and answer session.

Video of the event is available at right, while an MP3 audio recording can be downloaded below. To download a copy of the report, please click here.

This event was co-sponsored with Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

The Baby Business

Communications — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 09:30:00 -0400

A New America Event
06/21/2006 - 9:30am

Over the past several decades, breakthroughs in medicine and biotechnology have begun to alter the basic process of birth. Increasingly, parents are able to protect their unborn children from potential life-threatening diseases, or give birth to children that are chosen for specific genetic qualities. Infertility treatments are pushing back the age at which women can give birth, and novel surrogacy arrangements have given couples the opportunity to have others bear their children.

This discussion will consider how governments craft policies to deal with the social, moral, and commercial challenges that accompany the advances in stem cell technology and other reproductive sciences. We will consider questions such as: Should the U.S. government follow its European counterparts in regulating reproductive medicine more closely? Should the U.S. subsidize parents who want to pursue assisted reproduction? How can the federal government align its current policies with regard to stem cell technologies, which are heavily restrictive, with its laissez-faire approach to assisted reproduction? How will private firms respond to the market opportunities that reproductive science now offers? How will firms deal with the regulatory and moral challenges that will undoubtedly accompany these scientific advances?

Shannon Brownlee

Operations — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:45:00 -0400

Schwartz Senior Fellow

Shannon Brownlee is a writer whose stories, essays, and opinion pieces about medicine and health care have appeared in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Slate, Time, Discover, BusinessWeek, Washington Monthly, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wilson Quarterly. Her most recent awards include the 2004 AHCJ Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism, the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting, the National Association of Science Writers Science-in-Society Award, and the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Her work has been featured… more

Double Jeopardy

Articles — Sun, 05 May 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Imagine that the year is 2012. Your 80-year-old mother is suffering from Alzheimer's and your 16-year-old son desperately needs a new kidney. The good news, doctors tell you, is that there is now a cure for Alzheimer's based on cloning nerve cells, and a safe and effective way to grow a kidney that matches your son's genetic makeup. The bad news, however, is that these and similar treatments were banned in the United States in 2002. Worse still, if you take your loved ones abroad to benefit from these breakthroughs, they may be subject to criminal fines and imprisonment upon… more

Embryo Police

Articles — Fri, 01 Feb 2002 00:00:00 -0500

For Alan and Louise Masterton, the death of their daughter, Nicole, had a uniquely cruel twist. It was terrible enough that the3-year-old succumbed to burns suffered in an accident at the family's Monifieth, Scotland, home in 1999. But for the Mastertons, Nicole was more than just a cherished child -- she was a chromosomal miracle. The couple had spent 15 years trying to conceive a girl, bearing four sons in the process. When Nicole finally arrived in 1995, the Mastertons considered their prayers answered and their family complete. Louise had her tubes tied.

A month after Nicole's death, a heartbroken… more

Stem Cells -- No Matter, Science Will Win

Articles — Tue, 17 Jul 2001 00:00:00 -0400

George W. Bush is agonizing over his decision about federal policy on stem-cell research. And White House aides, meanwhile, are busily "backgrounding" reporters with tidbits designed to show that the president who normally prides himself on snappy management is consulting widely and thinking deeply on the subject.

For the inside-the-Beltway Washingtonians, it all makes for interesting reading, but for outside-the-Beltway Americans, there's not much reason to follow the circuities of Bush's pondering because, in effect, the decision has already been made for him. Nothing is going to stop the march of science on this issue, because nothing has stopped… more

The Politics of Cloning

Articles — Sun, 03 Jun 2001 00:00:00 -0400

At various points in U.S. history, issues and events come along that make old ideologies obsolete, that make existing coalitions untenable, that make the contradictions within parties too pressing to ignore. When this happens, the old assumptions … more

Human Nature, Public Policy and the Biotech Revolution

Communications — Wed, 27 Sep 2000 12:00:00 -0400

A New America Event
09/27/2000 - 12:00pm

Since the publication of his groundbreaking work The End of History and the Last Man, Frank Fukuyama has stayed ahead of the curve, describing the present historical moment with a lucidity and boldness shaped by his rich knowledge of the past and extraordinary sense for the future. Now he has turned his attention to an emerging family of technologies with the potential to change the trajectory of civilization and even what it means to be human -- the biotechnology revolution -- and he brings to this topic the breathtaking scope and keen analysis for which he is known.

Francis Fukuyama is the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and the author of The End of History and the Last Man, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, and The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order. He has also worked in the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation and on the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. He is currently working on a book addressing the political consequences of biotechnology.