Value proposition

A leading interdisciplinary research program.

Our Mission

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School was founded in 2005 through a generous gift from Joseph H. Flom and the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation, with the goal of promoting interdisciplinary analysis and legal scholarship in these fields. The Center is not an advocacy organization, but rather is dedicated to the unbiased analysis of pressing questions facing health policymakers.

The future promises to raise new and fascinating issues that will make these interdisciplinary analyses all the more important. Scientific advances are pushing the boundaries of existing thinking on everything from what defines a human life to what constitutes an ethically tenable area of research, as well as raising complex issues about the appropriate role of intellectual property. At the same time, transformations in health care financing and business practices, changes in the role of health law, and the growing realization that the environment has a direct link to human health have upset traditional professional and market paradigms.

The founding vision of the Petrie-Flom Center is to promote scholarly inquiry that breaks away from existing disciplinary lines and brings the totality of these disciplinary methodologies under its compass to inform policy. To achieve this goal, the Center fosters a community of leading intellectuals, practitioners, and policymakers from a variety of backgrounds and at all stages in their careers.

For more information about the Center, including affiliate news and scholarship, events, and more, please visit our website at http://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/.

Health Law, Health Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics