Can We Talk? A Public Conversation About Behavioral Genetics and Society

May 2-3, 2003

Convened by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and The Hastings Center

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Biographies

V. Elving Anderson, Ph.D.

V. Elving Anderson, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus with the Division of Epidemiology and the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota and continues in studies of breast cancer and the epilepsies. He was Secretary of the Behavior Genetics Association when it was organized in 1970 and also served one year (1982-83) as President of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. In 1960 he developed the genetic component of the Collaborative Perinatal Project, a large longitudinal study conducted by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and also has published on genetic factors in human breast cancer, mental retardation, psychotic disorders, and epilepsy.

Jon Beckwith, Ph.D.

Jon Beckwith, Ph.D., is American Cancer Society Professor at Harvard Medical School. He does genetic research on the bacterium Escherichia coli. His laboratory was the first to develop a technique for isolating a pure gene from this bacterium and has contributed to an understanding of processes such as gene regulation, protein secretion and protein folding. He has also been active in public discussions of the social implications of genetics for over 40 years. His work criticizes the assumptions, conclusions and public representation of human behavioral genetics studies. His recent book, Making Genes, Making Waves: A Social Activist in Science (Harvard University press, 2002) is a memoir recounting his adventures in the science and society arena. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has received awards from the Genetics Society of America and the American Society for Microbiology.

David C. Bowen, Ph.D.

David C. Bowen, Ph.D., is Minority Deputy Staff Director for Health of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. In 1999, Dr. Bowen joined the staff of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions as a Congressional Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. From 2000 to 2002, he held a joint appointment as a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Health Care Policy at the Harvard Medical School. Prior to joining the Kennedy staff, Dr. Bowen received his undergraduate education at Brown University then earned a Ph.D. in neurobiology at the University of California, San Francisco. He subsequently had a postdoctoral appointment at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals before joining a startup biotechnology company as a Senior Staff Scientist.

Audrey R. Chapman, Ph.D.

Audrey R. Chapman, Ph.D., is director of the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program and senior associate for ethics in the AAAS Program of Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion. She has served as codirector of AAAS projects dealing with genetic patenting, stem cell research, and inheritable genetic modifications. Her publications include Perspectives on Genetic Patenting: Religion, Science, and Industry in Dialogue and Unprecedented Decisions: Religious Ethics at the Frontiers of Genetic Science. She also coauthored AAAS reports on stem cell research and inheritable genetic modifications and coedited a forthcoming volume, Designing Our Descendants: Promises and Perils of Genetic Modifications.

Bruce B. Dan, M.D.

Bruce B. Dan, M.D., is Executive Director and Managing Editor of The Patient Channel and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Dr. Dan was the Senior Editor of the JAMA, Medical Editor and on-air correspondent for WLS-TV (ABC News, Chicago), Executive Editor and Anchor for Medical News Network, Medical Editor and Anchor for American Medical Television on CNBC, and Resident Physician for the PBS series Newton's Apple and HealthWeek. Dr. Dan was the AMA's Morris Fishbein Fellow in Medical Journalism, the University of Chicago's William Benton Fellow in Broadcast Journalism, and recipient of the American Medical Writers Association's John P. McGovern Award for outstanding contributions to medical communications. He has won two Emmy awards for his work in television.

Troy Duster, Ph.D.

Troy Duster, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at New York University, and also holds the position of Chancellor's Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Social Science Research Council. From 1996-99, he served on the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research, and during the same period served as member and then chair of the joint advisory committee on Ethical, Legal and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project (The ELSI Working Group) to the National Institutes of Health and Department of Energy. He has written extensively on the social implications of advances in molecular biology and genetics, including Backdoor to Eugenics (Routledge, 1990) and "The Social Consequences of Genetic Disclosure," in Ronald Carson and Mark Rothstein, eds., Culture and Biology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

Harold Edgar, J.D.

Harold Edgar, J.D., is the Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology at the Columbia University School of Law in New York. A Fellow of the Hastings Center since 1971, he has been active in many Hastings Centerr projects, including its seminal work on the controversies surrounding research on the XYY syndrome. Professor Edgar served as the Reporter for UNESCO's International Committee on Bioethics, and was one of the draters of the Declaration on Human Rights and the Human Genome, which has been adopted by UNESCO and approved by the UN General Assembly. At Columbia, he teaches both criminal law and a seminar on Law and Genetics.

Leonard M. Fleck, Ph.D.

Leonard M. Fleck, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy and Medical Ethics at Michigan State University in the Philosophy Department and in The Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences, College of Human Medicine. His main areas of academic research are medical ethics, health policy, and social and political philosophy. He has published on a range of issues related to health care justice, priority-setting and rationing, especially the role of rational democratic deliberation in addressing such issues. He has also written on a range of ethical issues related to genetics, reproductive decisionmaking and related policy matters. He has served as co-principal investigator for projects on "Communities of Color and Genetics Policy" and "Genome Technology and Reproduction: Values and Public Policy," both of which explored the role of rational community dialogue in addressing a range of ethical and policy issues connected to emerging genetic technologies.

Mark S. Frankel, Ph.D.

Mark Frankel, Ph.D., is Director of the Scientific Freedom, Responsibility and Law Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where he develops and manages the Association's activities on ethics, law and science. He has directed or co-directed several projects on genetics, one of which resulted in a seminal report on "Human Inheritable Genetic Modifications" (AAAS, 2000). He is a Fellow of AAAS and serves on the editorial board of several professional journals. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Patient Safety Foundation and of the Science and Ethics Advisory Group of Roche Genetics.

David Goldman, M.D.

David Goldman, M.D., is Chief of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Texas. With more than 200 publications, he is recognized as one of the foremost researchers in the field of neuropsychiatric genetics. Dr. Goldman's laboratory is a leader in the genetics of alcoholism, substance abuse, and related problems. His publications also reflect extensive contributions to a range of other psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, mood disorders, obsessive compulsive disease, other substance dependencies, and eating disorders. He and his colleagues have described about half of the functional variants ever found at neurotransmitter genes. He has identified, in a large-scale family linkage study on Southwestern American Indians, evidence for two major genes influencing vulnerability to alcoholism. He has originated or been a key investigator on several of the most promising candidate gene findings in behavior, including findings on the serotonin transporter and anxiety, the serotonin 1B receptor and antisocial alcoholism, and, most recently, linkage of the COMT gene to cognitive executive function and anxiety.

Dr. Goldman has pioneered work in sequence variant detection and genotyping, both at the protein and DNA levels. In functional genomics and proteomics, he discovered in vitro functional significance for several human brain gene polymorphisms - about half of those presently known. He is highly skilled in cellular and tissue functional genomics of both mRNA and proteins. At the RNA level, his laboratory is doing groundbreaking work in RNA quantitation in the brain. At the proteomic level, he is an expert on the large-scale analysis of protein expression in the brain (and other tissues), having performed the first large-scale studies of protein expression on brain and cerebrospinal fluid with two-dimensional protein electrophoresis.

Dr. Goldman sits on several editorial review boards, gives numerous invited lectures each year, and chairs the NIAAA human research committee (IRB). He was a participant in the PBS program, Genes on Trial, which highlighted the complex scientific and social issues associated with research on genetic and environmental influences on alcoholism.

Irving I. Gottesman, Ph.D.

Irving I. Gottesman, Ph.D., Hon. FRCPsych, is Sherrell J. Aston Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, and Bernstein Professor in Adult Psychiatry, Univeristy of Minnesota Medical School. He was co-founder of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) training program in behavior genetics at the Univeristy of Minnesota in 1966 and one of the earliest (1976) presidents of the Behavior Genetics Association. With collaborators in many countries as well as across North America, he studies the genetic epidemiology and the molecular genetics of complex human diseases and traits. Among his well-known books are Psychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Schizophrenia Genesis, Seminars in Psychiatric Genetics, and Schizophrenia and Manic Depressive Disorder. He currently serves as Chair of the National Twins Committee for the Institute of Medicine.

Laura Lee Hall, Ph.D.

Laura Lee Hall, Ph.D., is trained as a neuroscientist and did post-doctoral work at the National Institutes of Health. She has spent most of her career as a science policy analyst and advocate around issues of neurological disorders. She was a researcher with the former U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, where she authored the report, The Biology of Mental Disorders. She later wrote a report--Psychiatric Disabilities, Employment, and the Americans with Disabilities Act--which influenced the shape of regulations to implement the ADA. In 1995, Dr. Hall joined the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the country's largest advocacy organization for people with mental illness and their families. She is currently NAMI's Senior Research Director, conducting studies of mental health services and managing its advocacy and communications activities.

Steven E. Hyman, M.D.

Steven E. Hyman, M.D., is Provost of Harvard University and Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. From 1996 to 2001, he served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the component of the National Institutes of Health charged with generating the knowledge needed to understand, treat, and prevent mental illness. Prior to his position at NIMH, Dr. Hyman was Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of Psychiatry Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. His laboratory focused on mechanisms by which the neurotransmitter dopamine produced long-term changes in brain function by regulating the expression of genes. He taught neurobiology to medical students and graduate students at Harvard Medical School, and was the first faculty Director of Harvard University's Interfaculty Initiative in Mind, Brain, and Behavior. In addition to research articles, Dr. Hyman has authored and edited several widely used basic and clinical textbooks. He is currently Editor of the Annual Review of Neuroscience and serves on the editorial board of several other journals. Dr. Hyman is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Hyman received his BA from Yale in 1974 (summa cum laude), and his MA from the University of Cambridge in 1976, where he was a Mellon fellow studying the history and philosophy of science. He received his MD from Harvard Medical School (cum laude) in 1980. Following an internship in Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a residency in psychiatry in McLean Hospital, and a clinical fellowship in neurology at MGH, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard in molecular biology.

Gregory E. Kaebnick, Ph.D.

Gregory E. Kaebnick, Ph.D., is editor of the Hastings Center Report, a journal devoted to issues in bioethics, and associate for philosophical studies at The Hastings Center. His research at the Center has focused on issues related to genetics and the nature of moral deliberation. He is currently codirecting an NIH-funded project titled "Genetic Ties and the Future of the Family," on the implications of DNA-based paternity testing for children and for the parent-child relationship.

Alan I. Leshner, Ph.D.

Alan Leshner, Ph.D., is Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), where he is also Executive Publisher of the journal, Science. Prior to joining AAAS in December 2001, Dr. Leshner was Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which supports over 85% of the world's research on the health aspects of drug abuse and addiction. He has held positions at the National Institute of Mental health and the National Science Foundation. During his years as a faculty member at Bucknell University, Dr. Leshner's research focused on the biological bases of behavior, and he is the author of a major textbook on the relationship between hormones and behavior. Dr. Leshner is a Fellow of the AAAS and a member of the Institute of Medicine. In 1996, he was presented the Presidential Distinguished Executive Rank Award by President Clinton, the highest award in federal service.

Matt McGue, Ph.D.

Matt McGue, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota, the current director of that institution's graduate program in behavioral genetics, and a past president of the Behavior Genetics Association. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1981, and was on the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis before returning to the University of Minnesota as a faculty member in 1985. His research involves the use of twin, adoption and molecular genetic methods to understand the development of substance use and related mental disorders.

Yvette Marie Miller, M.D.

Yvette Miller, M.D., is chief medical officer of the Arizona Region of the American Red Cross and the National Marrow Donor Program at the Southern Arizona Donor Center in Tucson, AZ. She holds a Doctor of Medicine Degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed residency training in pathology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and was a Senior Staff Fellow in Transfusion Medicine at the Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Miller is a board certified clinical pathologist with interests in infectious disease testing, public health policy in undeserved communities, genetic testing, and complementary medicine.

Erik Parens, Ph.D.

Erik Parens, Ph.D., has an interdisciplinary background in the humanities. He is a Senior Research Scholar at The Hastings Center and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at Vassar College. His recent work explores the social and ethical implications of using medical technologies (such as surgery, psychopharmacology, and genetics) to shape ourselves and our progeny. He is principal Investigator on "Crafting Tools for Public Conversation about Behavioral Genetics."

Nancy Press, Ph.D.

Nancy Press, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing at OHSU, and Assistant Director of the Center for Ethics in Healthcare at that institution. She received her PhD in cultural anthropology from Duke University, followed by a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellowship in medical anthropology. Press' work has focused on the ethical and social implications of genetic information. She has worked both in the arena of prenatal diagnosis and genetic susceptibility to adult onset disorders. She is particularly interested in issues of risk perception and the social construction of genetic risk.

Kenneth F. Schaffner, M.D., Ph.D.

Kenneth F. Schaffner, M.D., Ph.D., is University Professor of Medical Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at the George Washington University. Before that, he was University Professor of History and Philosophy of Science and Research Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also served as Co-Director for the Center for Medical Ethics. He is the author of Discovery and Explanation in Biology and Medicine, published in 1993 by the University of Chicago Press. His recent work has been on ethical and philosophical issues in human behavioral and psychiatric genetics. He is currently completing a book on Behaving: What's Genetic and What's Not, and Why Should We Care? for Oxford University Press. Dr. Schaffner is a Fellow of both the Hastings Center and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a former Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy of Science, and currently is an associate editor of Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology.

Eric Turkheimer, Ph.D.

Eric Turkheimer, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Texas in 1985. His work involves empirical statistical and philosophical studies of the genetics of complex human behavior, and also extends into neuropsychology, psychobiology, and the law, as well as the assessment of personality. He has published papers about adoption and twin studies of cognitive abilities, and is an authority on the concept of "nonshared environment," the process through which the environment may act to make siblings in the same family different from each other. He is currently working on a study of the effects of parenting behavior on children, using a sample of children of adult twins.

Rick Weiss, M.A.

Rick Weiss, M.A., is a science and medical reporter for the Washington Post. He came to the Post's Health section in 1993 and moved to the national desk in January 1996, where he covers genetics, molecular biology, bioethics and other topics in the life sciences. Before coming to the Post, Weiss was a staff writer for Health magazine in San Francisco. Before that, he was for four years a biology and biomedicine writer at Science News magazine, a Washington, D.C.-based weekly. He also spent a year as a science writer for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Weiss earned a B.S. in biology from Cornell University in 1974, where he conducted research in entomology and agronomy. For ten years after that he worked as a licensed medical technologist in hospital laboratories, specializing in microbiology, serology and blood banking. In 1985, he entered the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a Masters in Journalism in 1987. He has written articles for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, Science, Discover and other publications.