Speaker Biographies

John E. Calfee is a resident scholar at AEI. From 1980 to 1986, he served in the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission. Mr. Calfee has taught marketing and consumer behavior in the business schools of the University of Maryland–College Park and Boston University, and was a visiting senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Calfee's research has focused on FDA regulation, health care, advertising and information, tort liability, and other related areas. He is the author of Prices, Markets, and the Pharmaceutical Revolution (AEI Press, 2000) and Fear of Persuasion: A New Perspective on Advertising and Regulation (AEI Press, 1997).

Dr. Sid Gilman is the William J. Herdman Distinguished University Professor of Neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School and was chair of the department of neurology from 1977 to 2004. His research work is in the pathophysiological processes underlying neurodegenerative disorders, notably the cerebellar ataxias, Parkinson’s disease, the parkinsonian syndromes, and Alzheimer’s disease. In 1991 he became director of the Michigan Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, a program funded by competitive grant applications by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health. He served from 1988 until 2000 as director of Michigan's program in the dementias, currently designated the Michigan Dementia Program. He is chair of the safety monitoring committee for the immunization trials for Alzheimer’s disease, which is jointly sponsored by two pharmaceutical companies, Elan and Wyeth. He was a member of the peripheral and central nervous system drugs advisory committee (PCNS) of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in terms of 3-4 years from 1983 to 2000 and served as chair from 1996 to 2000. Between appointments to the PCNS, he was appointed as a consultant to the FDA, a position he still maintains. In 1997 he was designated an honorary member of the American Neurological Association and in 2000 he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2001 he was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and in the same year became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a national associate of the National Academy of Sciences, and a past president of the American Neurological Association. Before his position at the University of Michigan, Dr. Gilman held faculty and hospital appointments at Harvard Medical School and Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. He is editor-in-chief of Experimental Neurology, Neurobiology of Disease, the Contemporary Neurology Series, and MedLink Neurology and a member of the editorial boards of several other neurological journals. Dr. Gilman has published more than 400 scientific papers, book chapters, and abstracts, including seven co-authored or edited books.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb is the deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a former senior official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. While a practicing physician from 2003–2004, Dr. Gottlieb served as a senior advisor to the FDA commissioner and as the agency’s director of medical policy development, leaving in the spring of 2004 to work on implementation of the new Medicare drug benefit as a senior adviser to the administrator of Medicare and Medicaid Services. As the FDA’s deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs, Dr. Gottlieb is a senior advisor to the FDA commissioner on all major agency matters, including regulations, policy, and administrative programs. His office works with all of the FDA’s centers on implementing and coordinating the agency’s regulatory and administrative policies aimed at advancing public health. Before re-joining the FDA, Dr. Gottlieb worked as a resident fellow at AEI, an American medical correspondent for the British Medical Journal, and a writer for Forbes magazine. The author of more than 300 policy and medical articles, Dr. Gottlieb is a noted authority on issues pertaining to health policy and medical technology, and on seeking improvements in public health through innovation in technology, medical practice, and health care delivery. Dr. Gottlieb practiced medicine as an attending physician at Stamford Hospital in Connecticut, where he was an internist on the hospital’s inpatient medical wards.

Dr. John Orloff is currently heading a cross-functional development wide effort at Novartis Pharma, where he is reshaping and revolutionizing the drug development process, from discovery to the postmarket arena. Before assuming his current position, Dr. Orloff was vice president and therapeutic head of the arthritis, bone metabolism, and women’s health division within clinical development and medical affairs, and was a member of the business franchise board. He previously served as section head for bone metabolism in clinical development. Dr. Orloff came to Novartis in April 2003, following his departure from Merck, where he held positions since 1997. At Merck, he was responsible for clinical development of new compounds for osteoporosis and bone-related conditions, including the once-weekly alendronate clinical program, and served on the business strategy team. Dr. Orloff served on the faculty of Yale University for eight years, where he was an associate professor. He currently serves as a clinical associate professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J.