March 9, 2005

Speaker Biographies

James F. Battey, Jr. is the director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, and also serves as chair of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Stem Cell Task Force. After receiving training in pediatrics, he pursued a postdoctoral fellowship in genetics at Harvard Medical School under the mentorship of Dr. Philip Leder. After completing his postdoctoral fellowship in 1983, Dr. Battey came to the NIH in as a senior staff fellow and then senior investigator with the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He later served as chief of the Molecular Neuroscience Section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and returned to the NCI to head the Molecular Structure Section of the Laboratory of Biological Chemistry. Dr. Battey was named director of intramural research for the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and later appointed director for NIDCD.

Jon Entine is an adjunct fellow at AEI and a scholar-in-residence at Miami University (Ohio). Mr. Entine’s most recent book, Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture (AEI Press, Spring 2005), will review the debate over genetic modification. His yet untitled edited volume on Social Security, public pension funds, and social investing will be published by AEI this summer. Abraham's Children: How Genetics is Unlocking Jewish Identity and the Hidden History of the Bible, will be published this fall (Gotham/Penguin, August 2005). His previous book on race and genetics, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We are Afraid to Talk About It (PublicAffairs, 2000), was an international bestseller. Taboo is based on an NBC documentary, Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction, written and produced with Tom Brokaw (named Best International Sports Film of 1989). Mr. Entine writes for numerous academic and popular publications. His latest article, "The Stranger-Than-Truth Story of The Body Shop" in Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot to Print (Nation Books, June 2004) was described by Publisher's Weekly as a "model of investigative journalism"; this article was originally written for Vanity Fair in 1994 but was censored because of libel threats. In September 1994, a distilled version of the article—"Shattered Image: Is The Body Shop Too Good to Be True?"—appeared in Business Ethics and won a National Press Club Award. Before launching his writing career, Mr. Entine spent twenty years as a network television news producer, during which time he won more than twenty awards, including two Emmys for specials on the reform movements in China and the former Soviet Union. He has served as a scholar, lecturer, and adjunct professor at various universities, including Columbia University, the University of Michigan, Arizona State University, New York University, and now Miami University (Ohio).

Francis Fukuyama is the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. As of July 1, 2005, Mr. Fukuyama will assume directorship of the SAIS International Development program. He has written widely on issues relating to questions concerning democratization and international political economy. His book The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press,1992) has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. He is also the author of Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (Free Press, 1995), The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (Free Press,1999), Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (Picador, 2002), and most recently, State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (Cornell University Press, 2004). Mr. Fukuyama has been a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation. In 1981–82 and in 1989 he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State—the first time as a regular member specializing in Middle East affairs and then as deputy director for European political-military affairs. He was also a member of the U.S. delegation to the Egyptian-Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy. From 1996-2000 he was the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. He is a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, and of advisory boards for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), The National Interest, the Journal of Democracy, and The New America Foundation. As an NED board member, he is responsible for oversight of the Endowment’s Middle East programs. He is also a member of the American Political Science Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the Global Business Network.

John Gearhart is the C. Michael Armstrong Professor of Medicine at the Institute of Cell Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, a professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Physiology and Comparative Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and a professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. A leading scientist in the field of genetic engineering of cells, Dr. Gearhart's work has focused on the development and use of human reproductive technologies. His highly significant research on the isolation and study of human embryonic stem cells has paved the way for the development of tissue transplantation therapies for degenerative diseases and injuries such as diabetes, Parkinson's disease, stroke and spinal cord injuries. He led the research team responsible for first identifying and isolating human pluripotent stem cells. The ground-breaking results were published in the much quoted report, "New Potential for Human Embryonic Stem Cells" (John D. Gearhart et al., Science, Volume 282, November 6, 1998). He has authored or coauthored as many as 221 publications relating to transgenesis, Down Syndrome, and stem cells.

Ken Giacin is the chairman and CEO of StemCyte, Inc. StemCyte, Inc. is one of the largest umbilical cord blood stem cell banks in the world with operations in the United States and Taiwan and research collaborations in New Jersey, California, and outside the United States. Mr. Giacin arrived at StemCyte in 2003 after almost twenty-six years with Johnson & Johnson (J&J). His most recent assignment at J&J was as senior vice president of Independence Technology, L.L.C., a global franchise within J&J that he started, which provides innovative products to people with disabilities. He also served as a member of the Global Management Board. He began his J&J career in the Domestic Operating Company and then moved to Baby Products, where he served on the management board. When Consumer Products was formed in 1990, he was appointed to the management board as vice president of Business Development. From 1991 until his return to J&J in 1995, Giacin was a corporate officer and vice president of worldwide business development for the Church & Dwight Company, responsible for developing brand value and business for the Arm & Hammer Brand, and later added research and development responsibilities as vice president of business development and technology. Giacin also serves on a number of boards and advisory panels, including Cerebral Palsy of New Jersey, the Human Engineering Research Laboratory of the University of Pittsburgh, and the National Institute for Child Health and Development (NIH). He has been nominated to the board of the New Jersey Stem Cell Research Education Foundation.

David Gollaher is the president and CEO of California Healthcare Institute (CHI), a private, non-profit public policy research and advocacy organization, representing California’s leading bioscience companies and academic institutions. Mr. Gollaher joined CHI when it was founded in 1993, and was named CEO in 1995. From 1991 to 1994, he served on the faculties of the University of California-San Diego and San Diego State University’s Graduate School of Public Health. Between 1985 and 1991, Mr. Gollaher was a vice president of Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, at which he was responsible for managed care, business development and corporate communications. Earlier in his career, he held executive positions with Phillips-Ramsey and Young & Rubicam New York. Mr. Gollaher is the author of three books and dozens of articles in the history of science, medical ethics and health policy. He sits on several foundation and company boards, and since 1997 has served on the California State Legislature’s Advisory Commission on Human Cloning.

Carl E. Gulbrandsen is the managing director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). Gulbrandsen has been with WARF, the patent management organization for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, since 1997. As managing director he created and is director of the non-profit subsidiary WiCell Research Institute, whose mission is to support human embryonic stem cell research at UW-Madison and to distribute human embryonic stem cells to researchers all over the world. WiCell has also developed a basic training course for scientists and to-date has trained over 140 scientists. Mr. Gulbrandsen is also a member of the executive committee of the Wisconsin Technology Council. From 1981 until 1992, Mr. Gulbrandsen practiced law in the private sector, concentrating on intellectual property with a specialty in patent prosecution and litigation. He served as general counsel of Lunar Corporation, a medical device company, and Bone Care International, a pharmaceutical company. Mr. Gulbrandsen is an adjunct professor in the Department of Physiology at the UW-Madison and is on the faculty of the Masters of Biotechnology program in the Department of Physiology. He is also a lecturer in patent law at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Mr. Gulbrandsen is a member of the Licensing Executive Society, the American Intellectual Property Law Association, the Wisconsin State Bar, the American Bar Association, and the Association of University Technology Managers, at which he serves as vice president for Public Policy.

Charles Jennings is the executive director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Mr. Jennings has headed the Harvard Stem Cell Institute since September 2004. His research background is mainly in developmental neurobiology. He did his postdoctoral work with Anne Mudge (UCL), Doug Melton (Harvard), and Steve Burden (MIT). In 1993 he left bench research to become an editor at Nature—based in London and Washington D.C.—before moving to New York in 1998 to become the founding editor of Nature Neuroscience. From 2000 to 2004, he was the executive editor responsible for all the biomedical Nature Research titles (Nature Genetics, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Cell Biology, and Nature Immunology). Mr. Jennings is a regular guest and lecturer around the world at universities, scientific worships, and conferences. He has published numerous research papers and scholarly contributions. Most recently, he coauthored the article "Altered Nuclear Transfer in Stem-Cell Research––a Flawed Proposal," which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2004.

Lori P. Knowles is a bioethics policy consultant and research associate of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, Canada. Mrs. Knowles specializes in international comparative law, particularly as it relates to biotechnology regulation. She has acted as a consultant to President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics, President Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Genome Canada, the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, and the National Academy of Sciences, among others. She is a member of the Ethics Oversight Committee for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs DNA Tissue Bank and the Scientific Advisory Board of Genome Canada. She is vice chair of the board of directors of the Institute of Forest Biotechnology in North Carolina, and a board member of the Pinchot Institute for Forest Conservation in Milford, Pa. Ms. Knowles is also a member of the faculty of Bard College’s School of Environmental Policy. Her research interests include international law and biotechnology policy, intellectual property and reproductive technology. She has published and presented nationally and internationally on topics ranging from property in the human body to agricultural biotechnology. She holds law degrees from Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, has practiced law in Toronto, Canada and taught at the University of Wisconsin Law and Medical Schools.

Robert Lanza is the vice president of Medical and Scientific Development at Advanced Cell Technology and is an adjunct professor of Surgical Sciences at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Dr. Lanza has several hundred scientific publications and patents, and has authored or edited sixteen books, including the Handbook of Stem Cells (as editor-in-chief; Academic Press, 2004), Principles of Tissue Engineering (Academic Press, 2000), Methods of Tissue Engineering (Academic Press, 2001), Principles of Cloning (Academic Press, 2002), One World: The Health & Survival of the Human Species in the 21st Century (as editor, with forewords by C. Everett Koop and former President Jimmy Carter; Health Press, 2000), and Medical Science & the Advancement of World Health (Abbey Publishing, 1985). Dr. Lanza is a former Fulbright Scholar and a student in the laboratory of Richard Hynes (MIT), Jonas Salk (The Salk Institute), and Nobel laureates Gerald Edelman (Rockefeller University) and Rodney Porter (Oxford University). He also worked closely and coauthored a series of papers with the late Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard.

Debora L. Spar is the Spangler Family Professor at Harvard Business School. Professor Spar works on issues of business-government relations and the political environment of international commerce. Her research focuses on issues of foreign trade and investment, examining how firms compete in foreign markets and how government policies shape and constrain their options. She is particularly interested in information-based industries such as media, entertainment, and biotechnology, and has recently published a book that explores the political evolution of cyberspace. Her current research examines the politics of reproductive science, analyzing how the "baby business" has developed and how commerce, politics and technology are likely to interact in and affect this market. At Harvard, Professor Spar teaches courses on the politics of international business, comparative capitalism, and economic development. She is also chair of Making Markets Work, an executive education program devoted to public and private sector leaders in Africa, and teaches and consults for a number of multinational corporations, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations. She has authored numerous publications in academic and public policy journals. She is also the author of Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet (Harcourt, 2001), as well as The Cooperative Edge: The Internal Politics of International Cartels (Cornell University Press, 1994), and coauthor with Raymond Vernon of Beyond Globalism: Remaking American Foreign Economic Policy (Free Press, 1988).

Wise Young is the founding director of the W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience and chair of the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience at Rutgers University. Dr. Young is recognized as one of the world's outstanding neuroscientists. Beginning in 1984, Dr. Young served as director of neurosurgery research at New York University. In 1997, he was recruited to establish and direct a world-class center for collaborative neuroscience at Rutgers. Dr. Young was part of the 1990 team that discovered and established high-dose methylprednisolone (MP) as the first effective therapy for spinal cord injuries. He subsequently developed the first standardized rat spinal cord injury model used worldwide for testing therapies, formed the first consortium funded by the NIH to test promising therapies, and helped establish several widely accepted clinical outcome measures in spinal cord injury research. Dr. Young founded and served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neurotrauma. He organized the National and International Neurotrauma Societies and serves or has served on advisory committees for the NIH, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Well-known as a leader in spinal cord injury research, Dr. Young has appeared on 20/20, 48 Hours, Today Eye-to-Eye, Fox News and CNN's news magazine. His work has been featured in a Life magazine special edition, in USA Today, and in innumerable other news, talk and print presentations throughout the world. In August 2001, Time named Dr. Young as "America’s Best" in the field of spinal cord injury research.

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