Penn Integrates Knowledge Professors

PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts commented on the use of DNA in surveillance and policing. “Because of the huge disparities and injustices in the way in which criminal laws are enforced, like rampant racial profiling by police, collecting DNA is a racist practice,” she said. “It embeds within it the racist practices for arresting people and charging them with crimes.”

PIK Professor Jonathan Moreno and CERL board member Stephen N. Xenakis argued that the Department of Defense should be cautious in its approach to vaccinating military personnel for COVID-19. “In a politically charged atmosphere, the men and women who wear the uniform should not suspect that they are being used as ‘guinea pigs’ for an unproven vaccine,” they wrote.

PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts spoke about the systemic neglect of Black Americans’ health. “Health inequities have literally killed thousands and thousands of Black people who would not have died if they had the death rates of white people,” she said.

PIK Professor Herbert Hovenkamp spoke about Microsoft’s interest in acquiring TikTok, a move unlikely to trigger an investigation by antitrust regulators. “We don’t have any actual case law that pursues mergers simply because the companies are big,” he said. “They have to be competitors, for the most part, and have significant market share.”

PIK Professor Jonathan Moreno and an AAAS colleague wrote about scientific preprints, web-based publications of yet-to-be-peer-reviewed research findings. “Let’s revel in the knowledge that preprints today are helping researchers share—especially with each other—their latest advances with great ease and speed. At the same time, let’s impose some discipline on our own proclivities to celebrate prematurely or sink into despair,” they wrote.

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel said, of public support for universal health care, “There’s been a shift toward more receptivity to bigger solutions to both of our biggest problems: coverage and affordability. But people’s thinking hasn’t caught up with the dire situation we’re in.”

PIK Professor Herbert Hovenkamp said European regulators have been “been much more open recently (to anti-competition actions), particularly with tech.”

PIK Professor Jonathan Moreno commented on the results of a survey which found that most people find requests for donations from the hospitals that treated them to be unacceptable. “Absent evidence that soliciting patients with financial means makes much difference to an institution’s financial viability, and in an era of rampant mistrust, it’s best to forgo such practices,” he said.

PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts spoke about how race is misused in medical diagnostics and treatments. “The reason I'm so passionate about ending race medicine isn't just because it's bad medicine,” she said. “I’m also on this mission because the way doctors practice medicine continues to promote a false and toxic view of humanity.”

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel tweeted in support of Anthony Fauci, calling him “a consummate professional whose advice has been sought out and respected by presidents of both parties. These attacks on him are disgusting and say more about those leveling them than about Dr. Fauci.”