Health Law Expert Says Pa. Doctors Should Fear the New Drilling Law

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

April 19, 2012 | 12:32 PM

For a more detailed look at the legislation, click here.
A health law professor at Drexel University says the new law governing a doctor’s access to information about drilling chemicals to treat patients is both poorly drafted and incomplete. Barry Furrow is the director of the health law program at the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University. Furrow says the segment dealing with a doctor’s access to trade secret information is lifted right out of an OSHA rule. But he says, the Pennsylvania law lacks the nuances and wider protections provided to workers under OSHA.
“If you look at the OSHA trade secret protections,” says Furrow, “it’s within a framework of a regulatory agency that has a lot of other mandates to protect the workers. The trade secret protections are limited, and the agency is out there protecting and has separate knowledge of the chemistry of these substances. This disclosure just sits there in the absence of a public health registry or any overarching public health framework when it comes to toxicity.”
Furrow says the OSHA regulations only apply to workers, whereas the Pennsylvania law applies to any patient.
Lawmakers, and even the Pennsylvania Medical Society, have said the intent of the law is not to gag doctors, or prevent them from discussing the toxins with patients and public health officials. But Furrow says the law is so vague, and lacks boundaries, that he understands why doctors are nervous.
“This confines doctors too much,” says Furrow. “It takes public health out of the picture and leaves doctors unprotected, whatever legislators may say.”
Furrow says a good lawyer wouldn’t advise his client on what a lawmaker says is the intent. He also says the OSHA rules allow the doctor to contest the confidentiality agreement. But there’s no such protections in the Pennsylvania law.