Speaker biographies

James Driscoll has a Ph. D. in English from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and has written scholarly books on Shakespeare, Milton, and Jung.  Living in San Francisco in the 1980s he saw HIV decimate the city's gay community.  To help get better treatments to close friends in desperate need, he joined the AIDS activist movement and soon became a national leader in the struggle for faster FDA approval of AIDS drugs.  He has led numerous street demonstrations against FDA, and his op-eds calling for FDA reform and defending free market incentives for drug research and development have appeared in many leading newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times.  When the protease HIV drugs were approved in 1996 and the FDA reform bill was passed in 1997, he turned to advocacy for greater access to these breakthroughs. From its beginning he has been a leader in the drive to expand and improve ADAP, the AIDS Drug Assistance Program.  In 2001 President Bush appointed him to PACHA (the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV-AIDS), where he championed the PEPFAR international AIDS program and worked to secure presidential support for waiving FDA regulations that obstructed research, development, and approval of rapid tests for HIV and other infectious diseases.

Jeremiah Norris is a senior fellow with Hudson Institute, working primarily on issues in the global HIV/AIDS environment. Prior to this, he was senior director for Operations and International Affairs with the WebMD Foundation, charged with developing a joint UN/private sector partnership to bridge the digital divide in public health through deployment of a Health InterNetwork for developing nations. He served four years as a senior adviser for the Harvard Medical School’s international programs. In the George H. W. Bush administration, Norris was the director of the human resources office, Bureau for Europe, Department of State/U.S. Agency for International Development. In this position, he managed the U.S. government response for health, pension, and social activities in the former states of the USSR and Eastern Europe. He also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, developing agricultural cooperatives in rural areas, then as a staff member in Peace Corps/Washington, where he directed its Office of Private and International Affairs.

Roger Bate is a resident fellow at AEI. He researches aid policy in Africa and the developing world, evaluating the performance and effectiveness of USAID, the World Bank, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, NGOs, as well as other aid organizations and development policy initiatives. He writes extensively on topics such as health policy and endemic diseases in developing countries (malaria, HIV/AIDS); water policy; international environmental and health agreements (industrial chemicals, climate change, and water); and genetically modified organisms and pesticide policy. Mr. Bate’s writings have appeared in, among others, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Economic Affairs, and he regularly contributes to AEI's Environmental Policy Outlook and Health Policy Outlook series. Before joining AEI, Mr. Bate founded the environmental unit at the Institute of Economic Affairs in 1993 and co-founded the European Science and Environment Forum (1995–2001). He has also served as both a director and fellow at the International Policy Network in the United Kingdom.

Richard Tren is co-founder and director of Africa Fighting Malaria, a health advocacy group based in the United States and South Africa. His research focuses on the political economy of malaria control, access to medicines and HIV/AIDS treatment, the benefits of private ownership of water in South Africa, deregulation of agriculture, and health and development policy. He co-authored (along with fellow panelist Roger Bate) Malaria and the DDT Story (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2001), which was published in South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and India. Mr. Tren has completed research projects for, among others, the South African government, and he has been a frequent contributor for Business Day (South Africa), the Wall Street Journal Europe, and the Business Standard (India).

View Event Details