It is primarily through the past research and the extensive knowledge and experience of the group of project advisors, the working group, that this project will achieve its objectives. We have gathered together a group of notable scholars from genetics, philosophy, medicine, law, religious studies, sociology, cultural anthropology, and history as well as scholars whose work is intimately tied to questions of race and ethnicity, such as those working in African-American Studies, Jewish Studies, and Native American Studies. The members of the group are listed below, along with a brief description of what they bring to the project.
Laura
Arbour,
M.Sc., M.D., FRCPC, FCCMG, University of British Columbia, Clinical Assistant
Professor. Arbour is a pediatrician specializing in clinical genetics and
is trained as a genetic counselor. She has done extensive clinical work in
pediatrics and research in clinical genetics with aboriginal peoples in the
north of Canada, including current work on the utilization of maternal triple
screen in First Nations Women, which serves as a preliminary study of access
to genetics services in First Nations Communities.
Jose Barzelatto, M.D. Between 1975 and 1989, Barzelatto worked at the
World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, where he served as director
of the Special Programme for Research and Training in Human Reproduction.
Between 1989 and 1996, he served as the director of Reproductive Health and
Population Program of the Ford Foundation. Currently he is Vice President
of the Center for Health and Social Policy, which carries out a variety of
public education activities and policy analysis.
Francoise Baylis, Ph.D., Dalhousie University, Associate Professor
of Philosophy and Medicine and Bioethics Education and Research. Baylis is
a black woman who has published mainly on issues in pediatrics, research ethics,
and new reproductive technologies and has also completed work on issues of
race and ethnicity, and marginalized populations and in health care. She is
part of a project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada (SSHRC) on Enhancement Technologies and Human Identity.
Paul Brodwin, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Associate Professor,
Department of Anthropology. Brodwin is a medical anthropologist who has done
fieldwork on traditional medical systems in rural Haiti, on the anthropology
of chronic pain, and on how new biotechnologies are transforming the contemporary
meaning and management of birth, illness, and death. His most recent edited
collection in press, Biotechnology, Culture and the Body, takes up
issues encompassing cultural identity, kinship, and genetic heritage.
Tod Chambers, Ph.D., Northwestern University Medical School, Medical
Ethics and Humanities Program. Chambers was originally trained in comparative
religion and cultural studies at Northwestern University. His doctoral dissertation
included fieldwork in Thailand, where he studied the role of ritual in Thai
Buddhism. He currently works in the Program in Medical Ethics and Humanities
at Northwestern University, where his research has focused on the structure
and style of bioethics writing. He writes and teaches on culture and bioethics,
and he is also part of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada (SSHRC) project on Enhancement Technologies and Human Identity.
Annette Dula, Ph.D., University of Colorado at Boulder, senior research
associate, Women's Studies Program. Dula is one of a handful of African American
Bioethicists in the United States whose area of interest focuses on racial
aspects of bioethics. She was a Fellow at the University of Chicago Center
for Clinical Medical Ethics and has taught everyday medial ethics to interns
and residents in neighborhood clinics. Her book, It Just Ain't Fair! The
Ethics of Health Care for African Americans, was published in 1994.
James Edwards, Ph.D., Furman University, Professor of Philosophy. Edwards
brings to this project his long-term scholarship on the ethics of authenticity,
which he has articulated in his three books: Ethics Without Philosophy,
The Authority of Language, and The Plain Sense of Things. He
has taught ethics at Furman for 29 years. Two recent papers, "Religion, Medicine
and Superstition," (which will appear in Slow Cures and Bad Philosophers:
Wittgenstein, Medicine and Bioethics, ed. Carl Elliott, in press, Duke
University Press), and "Technology or Therapeia: Heidegger and Foucault in
the Precincts of Prozac" (which has been accepted to appear in a volume on
enhancement technologies), are particularly pertinent to issues of authenticity
in light of new genetic variations discoveries. He is part of a project funded
by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) on
Enhancement Technologies and Human Identity.
Carl Elliott, M.D., Ph.D., University of Minnesota, Associate Professor
at the Center for Bioethics. Issues of culture and identity have been central
to Elliott's work. A native of South Carolina, he did his graduate work in
Scotland and has held academic appointments in New Zealand, Quebec and South
Africa, where he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of
Natal Medical School, the first institution in South Africa to train non-white
physicians. His recent book A Philosophical Disease examines the interplay
of culture and identity in various bioethical questions. His philosophical
work on Wittgenstein, including the forthcoming edited collection Slow
Cures and Bad Philosophers, has taken up the question of how moral language
is related to different cultures, or "forms of life." He is currently involved
in grant-funded projects on moral reasoning in multiethnic settings and on
enhancement technologies and human identity (including gene therapy and the
genetics of aging). During his sabbatical year 1999-2000 in Germany and New
Zealand, where he will be a William Evans Visiting Fellow at the University
of Otago, he will complete a book on philosophical issues surrounding enhancement
technologies.
David Gems, Ph.D., University College London, The Galton Laboratory,
Department of Biology. Gems is a research biologist, with twelve years experience
in the field of genetics. He specializes in the field of aging. Currently
holding the Royal Society University Research Fellow at University College,
London. He has published in both genetics research and bioethics, including
his recent review in Nature "Enhancing human traits: ethical and social
implications." He is part of a project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) on Enhancement Technologies and Human Identity.
Elizabeth Haiken, Ph.D., University of British Columbia, Assistant
Professor of History. Haiken is a historian of medicine who has published
extensively on questions of female identity, particularly as it relates to
beauty and cosmetic enhancements. In her history of cosmetic surgery, Venus
Envy, she addressed the way ethnicity influenced American ideals of beauty
and the norms influencing the development of cosmetic surgery.
Stanley Hauerwas, Ph.D., D.D., Duke University, Divinity School. Hauerwas
has written widely on bioethics, suffering, and social justice, in for example,
Suffering Presence: Theological Reflections on Medicine, The Mentally
Handicapped and the Church; and Dispatches from the Front: Theological
Engagements with the Secular. He has been named to the prestigious Gifford
Lectures at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland for the year 2000-2001.
Josie Johnston,
B.A., L.L.B. (Hons), research assistant at the University of Minnesota Center
for Bioethics. Johnston worked for three years as a lawyer in New Zealand
and Europe before returning to the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand
to undertake a Masters of Bioethics and Health Law. Her Masters dissertation,
which she will complete in June, considers the impact of the criminal law
on surgeons performing healthy limb amputations.
John Lantos, M.D., University of Chicago, Associate Professor of Pediatrics
and Associate Director, The MacLean Center for clinical Medical Ethics, and
Co-Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. Lantos is
a pediatrician who has been has been Co-Investigator (with Mary Mahowald)
on two ELSI grants dealing with the implications of new genetic knowledge,
one on the Human Genome Project and Women, and one on the Human Genome Project
and Primary Care. He has also worked on ethical issues related to treatments
for sickle cell disease, and more generally on ethical issues related to innovative
therapies. He has addressed issues of caring for the indigent populations
in his book Do We Still Need Doctors, and was a member of the Working
Group on Ethics for the Clinton Health Care Reform Task Force.
Trudo Lemmens, LL.M., Joint Centre for Bioethics, Toronto. Lemmens
holds a tenure-track position in genetics, ethics and the law at the University
of Toronto and chairs the Genetics and Ethics Research Network at the Joint
Centre for Bioethics at the University. Has published extensively on genetics
and ethics, especially the social implications of genetic research.
Steve Miles,
M.D. Miles is a Professor in the Department of Medicine, faculty in the Center
for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota and a staff physician in the
Department of Internal Medicine at St. Paul Ramsey Medical Center. He is a
Faculty Associate in the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies and a member
of the University Council on Aging at the University of Minnesota. Miles'
clinical work informs his work in bioethics. His clinical studies have focused
on end-of-life care. His policy work has focused on the need for health care
reform. He is best known for his work on end-of-life care, the development
of portable advance directives, the Wanglie case, and health care reform in
Minnesota.
Erik Parens, Ph.D., Associate for Philosophical Studies, The Hastings
Center. Parens directs the Center's ELSI-funded research project "Prenatal
Testing for Genetic Disability" and recently completed directing an HEH-funded
project, "On the Prospect of Technologies Aimed at the Enhancement of Human
Capacities." He also directs the Hastings Center Values and Biotechnology-funded
project "Anxiety and/or Insight? Encountering Genetic Technologies," which
analyzes public response to biotechnology. He has been involved in research
related to ethics and genetics throughout this six-year tenure at the Hastings
Center and has authored many articles in this area.
Michael Root, Ph.D., University of Minnesota, Associate Professor,
Department of Philosophy. Root specializes in philosophy of social science
and is currently working on how the concept of race is used in medicine, science,
and social science. He has taken up this topic in several recently completed
papers presented including "The Meaning and Importance of Race," "Racial Realism"
and "How We Divide the World."
Naomi Scheman, Ph.D., University of Minnesota, Professor, Department
of Philosophy and Chair of Women's Studies Department. A philosopher cross-appointed
in Departments of Philosophy and Women's Studies; Scheman specializes in epistemology,
Wittgenstein, and feminist thought. She has put issues of identity, multiculturalism,
and marginalized peoples at the center of her research, most notably in her
book Engenderings: Constructions of Knowledge, Authority and Privilege.
Nancy Schepher-Hughes, Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley,
Professor, Department of Anthropology. An anthropologist, Schepher-Hughes
specializes in critical theory applied to the human body, to illness, and
to medicine. She has done ethnographic work in Brazil, South Africa, Ireland,
Cuba, and New Mexico. She is currently the director of the Graduate Program
in Medical Anthropology at Berkeley.
Joel Shuman, Duke University, Divinity School. Shuman is a theologian
who is also trained in physical therapy. His book, The Body of Compassion,
dealt with issues of ethic, medicine, and narrative. He is currently working
on ethical issues in clinical genetics.
Mark Thomas, Ph.D., University College London, Lecturer, The Center
for Genetic Anthropology, Departments of Anthropology and Biology. Thomas
is a molecular geneticist working at the Center for Genetic Anthropology at
University College London. He is part of a research group working on the use
of Y chromosome polymorphisms to study relationships between the ancient and
modern populations of the Near East, north Africa, east Africa and western
Asia, with particular emphasis on the relationships of Jewish and Judaic populations.
He has published papers on Jewish genetic lineages and the origins of Old
Testament priests in Nature and other scientific periodicals.
Dale Turner, Ph.D., Dartmouth College, Visiting Assistant Professor
of Government and Native American Studies. Turner is a Teme-Augama Anishnabai
from northern Ontario, a community that has been involved in a century old
land dispute with the provincial and federal governments. His scholarship
has been based on the attempt to better understand the meaning of "sovereignty",
and especially the meaning of indigenous or "tribal" sovereignty, in both
theory and practice.
J.D. Walker, Ph.D. Walker has taught political philosophy at the University
of Pennsylvania, Franklin and Marshall College and the University of Minnesota
at Duluth. He has also regularly taught courses in bioethics, specializing
in issues of exploitation and in liberal political theory. He is currently
Instructional Multimedia Consultant at the Digital Media Center at the University
of Minnesota. In addition to bringing his expertise in political philosophy
to the working group, he will be responsible for the creation of the project's
web site.
Laurie Zoloth, Ph.D., San Francisco State University, Director of Jewish
Studies. Zoloth brings extensive experience in thinking about equality and
justice, both in the general context of health care delivery and in the more
particular context of the delivery of genetic services. She is the author
of Health Care and the Ethics of Encounter: A Jewish Discussion of Social
Justice, University of North Carolina Press, 1999. She serves on the American
Association for the Advancement of Science's national board for The Dialogue
for Science, Ethics and Religion, and the national board for the American
Society for Bioethics and Humanities.