Appendix B
Committee Biographies
Richard O. Hynes, PhD, (Co-Chair), (NAS, IOM) is the Daniel K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research at the MIT Center for Cancer Research and Department of Biology, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He was formerly head of the Biology Department and then director of the Center for Cancer Research. His research focuses on fibronectins and integrins and the molecular basis of cellular adhesion, both in normal development and in pathological situations, such as cancer, thrombosis, and inflammation. Dr. Hynes’s current interests are cancer invasion and metastasis, angiogenesis, and animal models of human disease states. In 1997, he received the Gairdner International Foundation Award. In 2000, he served as president of the American Society for Cell Biology and testified before Congress about the need for federal support and oversight of embryonic stem cell research.
Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD, (Co-Chair), is the Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Professor of Biomedical Ethics and director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia. He is a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and is a member of the Council on Accreditation of the Association of Human Research Protection Programs. Dr. Moreno is also a member of the Board on Health Sciences Policy of the Institute of Medicine. Among Dr. Moreno’s books are In the Wake of Terror: Medicine and Morality in a Time of Crisis, and Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans. Dr. Moreno also serves as a commentator and columnist for ABCNews.com and is a frequent guest on various news programs, including NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. Dr. Moreno was a senior consultant for the National Bioethics Advisory Commission
and a senior staff member of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments during the Clinton administration.
Elizabeth Price Foley, JD, LLM, is a professor of law at Florida International University (FIU) College of Law. Before joining the FIU College of Law in 2002 as one of its founding faculty, she was a professor of law at Michigan State University (MSU) College of Law and an Adjunct Professor in the Center for Ethics and Humanities of the MSU College of Human Medicine. Dr. Foley’s scholarship focuses on bioethics and the intersection of health care law and constitutional law, and her articles have been cited in more than 100 law journals. She is a frequent commentator on health law and bioethics issues for national and international media such as CNN, Fox News, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Before teaching law, Dr. Foley served as a judicial clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She also spent a number of years on Capitol Hill, serving as senior legislative aide to Representative Ron Wyden (D-OR), legislative aide for the District of Columbia office of the Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York, and legislative aide for Representative Michael Andrews (D-TX). Dr. Foley received her BA from Emory University, her JD from the University of Tennessee College of Law and her LLM from Harvard Law School.
Norman Fost, MD, MPH, is a professor of pediatrics and director of the Program in Bioethics, which he founded in 1973. He is chair of the Health Sciences Institutional Review Board, chair of the University of Wisconsin Hospital Ethics Committee, chair of the university’s Bioethics Advisory Committee, and director of the Child Protection Team. He was a member of Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Task Force and numerous other federal and state committees. He received his AB from Princeton, his MD from Yale, and his MPH from Harvard. He has been awarded the Nellie Westerman Prize in Research Ethics, and the William Bartholome Award for Excellence in Ethics from the American Academy of Pediatrics. His research interests include regulation of human subjects research, ethical and policy issues in access to human growth hormone, and the use of interactive computers in genetic counseling.
H. Robert Horvitz, PhD, (NAS, IOM) is the David H. Koch Professor of Biology in the Department of Biology at MIT and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He is also a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and a member of the MIT Center for Cancer Research. Dr. Horvitz’s research interests include molecular and cellular biology, developmental and behavioral genetics, apoptosis, human neurological disease, neural development, morphogenesis, cell lineage, cell fate, micro-RNAs, signal transduction, transcriptional repression, and chromatin remodeling. Dr. Horvitz has served as a member of the Advisory Council of the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health and was co-chair of the Working Group on Preclinical Models for
Cancer of the National Cancer Institute. He was President of the Genetics Society of America in 1995. Dr. Horvitz received the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health (1995), the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize (1998), the Gairdner Foundation International Award (1999), and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience (2001). In 2002, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his studies of the genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death.
Marcia Imbrescia is the current owner of Peartree Design, a landscape firm, and was previously the media director for Drumbeater, a high technology advertising agency. She holds BA degrees in marketing and journalism, and a graduate certificate in landscape design. Ms. Imbrescia has a passion for health advocacy and helping people with illness and disability. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Arthritis Foundation (AF), for which she has participated as a volunteer at the chapter and national levels. She served as member (1996-1998, 2001) and chairperson (2002-2003) of AF’s American Juvenile Arthritis Organization. In 1992, she received the Volunteer of the Year Award from the Massachusetts Chapter of AF. Her volunteer efforts include program development, conference planning, public speaking, fundraising, and advocacy.
Terry Magnuson, PhD, is Sarah Graham Kenan Professor and chair of the Department of Genetics at the University of North Carolina. He also directs the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences, and is the program director of cancer genetics at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Magnuson’s research interests include mammalian genetics, genomics, and development. His laboratory has developed a high-throughput system to study the effects of mutations on mouse development with mouse embryonic stem cells. He is particularly interested in the role of murine polycomb-group genes on the processes of autosomal imprinting, X-inactivation, and anterior-posterior patterning of axial structures in mammals. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Genetics Society of America and of the Society for Developmental Biology.
Cheryl Mwaria, PhD, is professor of anthropology and director of African studies at Hofstra University. Her fieldwork as a medical anthropologist in Kenya, Botswana, Namibia, the Caribbean, and the United States has focused on women’s health, race relations, and differential access to health care. She has served on the Executive Boards of the American Ethnological Society, the Society for the Study of Anthropology of North America, and the Association of Feminist Anthropology. She is currently director of the Africa Network, a nonprofit consortium of liberal arts colleges committed to literacy about and concern for Africa in American higher education. Dr. Mwaria is a member of the Center for Urban Bioethics at the New York Academy of Medicine and has served as a consultant in community values in
end-of-life care for North General Hospital in New York City and the New York Academy of Medicine Center for Urban Bioethics. Her most recent fieldwork (2002-2003) was conducted at a major cancer research center and focused on minority group access to cancer-related clinical trials. Her publications pertaining to biomedical ethics include “Biomedical Ethics, Gender and Ethnicity: Implications for Black Feminist Anthropology” in Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Praxis, Politics and Poetics (Irma McClaurin, ed., 2001).
Janet Rossant, PhD, is the co-head of the Fetal Health and Development Program at Mount Sinai Hospital, professor at the University of Toronto, and director of the Center for Modelling Human Disease. Dr. Rossant studies lineage determination in the developing embryo. She has received numerous prizes for her work in establishing the fates of early developing cells in the mouse embryo, including the McLaughlin Medal from the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) Distinguished Scientist Award, and the Robert L. Noble Prize from the National Cancer Institute of Canada. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Stem Cell Research and participated in the development of the CIHR guidelines for embryonic stem cell research, which do not permit the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer to create stem cells.
Janet D. Rowley, MD, (NAS, IOM) is the Blum-Riese Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology, and Human Genetics at the University of Chicago. She has contributed significantly to advances in understanding of genetic changes in cancer. She focused on chromosomal abnormalities in human leukemia and lymphoma and in 1972, using new techniques of chromosome identification, discovered the first consistent chromosomal translocation in human cancer. She has identified more than a dozen recurring translocations. Her laboratory is analyzing the gene expression pattern of recurring translocations to identify unique markers of leukemias for diagnosis and potentially as therapeutic targets. With Felix Mitelman, she cofounded and is coeditor of Genes, Chromosomes and Cancer, the premier cancer cytogenetics journal. She is a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.
Liaison from the Board on Life Sciences
R. Alta Charo, JD, is the Elizabeth S. Wilson-Bascom Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin Law and Medical Schools, and associate dean for research and faculty development at the University of Wisconsin Law School at Madison. She is the author of over 75 articles, book chapters, and government reports on such topics as voting rights, environmental law, reproductive rights, medical genetics law, reproductive technology policy, and science policy. She serves on the expert advisory boards of several organizations with an interest
in stem cell research, including the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, WiCell, and the Wisconsin Stem Cell Research Program. She is also a consultant to the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. In 1994, Dr. Charo served on the National Institutes of Health Human Embryo Research Panel. From 1996 to 2001, she was a member of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission and participated in the writing of its reports on research ethics and cloning. Since 2001, she has been a member of the National Academies Board on Life Sciences.