EP #198 - 01.08.2021 - The Law, Policy and Ethics of the COVID-19 vaccine

Today we have a discussion of the law, policy, and ethics of the COVID-19 vaccine in the United States with Dorit Reiss and Ross Silverman.

Dorit Rubinstein Reiss is a professor of law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Increasingly, her research and activities are focused on legal issues related to vaccines, including exemption laws and tort liability related to non-vaccination. She published law review and peer reviewed articles and many blog posts on legal issues related to vaccines. 

She received an undergraduate degree in Law and Political Science (1999, Magna cum Laude) from the Faculty of Law in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received her Ph.D. from the Jurisprudence and Social Policy program in UC Berkeley. 

She is a member of the Parents Advisory Board of Voices for Vaccines and the the Vaccine Working Group on Ethics and Policy, and active in vaccine advocacy in other ways.

Ross D. Silverman, JD, MPH, is Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health and Professor of Public Health and Law at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis. He is a member of the IU Centers on Health Policy and Bioethics. His recent vaccine- and pandemic-related work has appeared in such peer-reviewed publications as the New England Journal of Medicine, BMJ, JAMA, JAMA-Pediatrics, the Hastings Center Report, and the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. He serves as a member of the Covid-19 Vaccine Allocation advisory committee for the Indiana State Health Department, and is an Associate Editor for the journal Public Health Reports, the official journal of the U.S. Surgeon General and the U.S. Public Health Service.