I. Glenn Cohen, JD

Prof. Cohen is one of the world’s leading experts on the intersection of bioethics (sometimes also called “medical ethics”) and the law, as well as health law. He also teaches civil procedure. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. He has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on genetic privacy, spoken to NATO on biotechnology and human enhancement, addressed the OECD and members of the US and the Korean Congress on medical AI policy, and advised then- U.S. Vice President Harris on reproductive rights. He has provided bioethical advising and consulting to some of the largest healthcare companies in the world including Bayer, Otsuka, and Illumina. He has given grand rounds and lectured to medical and industry conferences across the world. His work has been frequently covered by or appeared in media venues such as PBS, NPR, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Boston Globe.

He was the youngest professor on the faculty at Harvard Law School (tenured or untenured) both when he joined the faculty in 2008 (at age 29) and when he was tenured as a full professor in 2013 (at age 34), though not the youngest in history.

Prof. Cohen’s current projects relate to medical AI, mobile health and other health information technologies, abortion, reproduction/reproductive technology, the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs, research ethics, organ transplantation, rationing in law and medicine, health policy, FDA law, translational medicine, medical tourism and many other topics.

He is the author of more than 300 articles and chapters and his award-winning work has appeared in leading legal (including the Stanford, Cornell, and Southern California Law Reviews), medical (including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA), bioethics (including the American Journal of Bioethics, the Hastings Center Report), scientific (Science, Cell, Nature Reviews Genetics) and public health (the American Journal of Public Health) journals, as well as Op-Eds in the New York Times, Washington Post, New Republic, Time Magazine, and other venues.

Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law, and Ethics

Grant Cycle: 2011 - 2012

Medical tourism includes travel to obtain interventions that are prohibitively difficult to obtain in the patient’s home country, such as kidney transplantation for some patients. Medical tourism may also include travel to obtain interventions that are illegal in the patient’s home country, such as certain types of stem cell transplantation or assisted reproduction. Increasingly, patients also travel to obtain interventions that are both legal and available in their home country but cost much less abroad, such as coronary bypass surgery. Professor Cohen will analyze numerous ethical dilemmas and legal problems in medical tourism. For example, how should kidney specialists in the U.S. respond when patients inquire about purchasing a kidney transplant abroad? Are nephrologists who advise patients on higher-quality centers abroad acting in the patient’s best interests or encouraging illegal or unethical behavior? Should these physicians provide care for a patient who purchased an organ transplant despite their advice? On a policy level, may employers or insurers offer incentives or set requirements for patients to obtain expensive services abroad in order to reduce costs? If patients are injured as a result of substandard care in other countries, what legal recourse do they now have and what should they have? In addition, Professor Cohen will also analyze how medical tourism may impact professional ethics and health care delivery in the U.S.