Dr. Richard Hsinshin Ho
On Nov. 7, Dr. Robert M. Cook-Deegan, director of the Center for Genome Ethics, Law, and Policy, part of Duke University’s Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, will discuss the impact of intellectual property rights on the free flow of scientific information.
Cook-Deegan is the author of the 1994 book, The Gene Wars: Science, Politics, and the Human Genome, and a national expert on the benefits and pitfalls of patenting genetic material.
Until July 2002, Cook-Deegan directed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellowship program at the Institute of Medicine, where he was also founding director of the National Cancer Policy Board from 1996 to 2000. He also worked in mental health policy, tobacco control, biomedical research policy and federal R&D budgeting for 11 years at The National Academies.
A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Colorado, where he earned his medical degree in 1979, Cook-Deegan came to Washington, D.C. in 1982 as a congressional science fellow and stayed for five more years at the congressional Office of Technology Assessment.
The lecture, sponsored by the Vanderbilt Center for Genetics and Health Policy, will be at noon in 208 Light Hall.
To reserve a lunch, e-mail Janelle Owens in the Medical Student Affairs Office at janelle.owens@ vanderbilt.edu. For more information, call Monica Hollman, program coordinator of the Center for Genetics and Health Policy at 322-7884.