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Obama gets new bioethics chief
The new executive director of President Obama's Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues began work Monday.
Lisa Lee, a 14-year employee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, takes over from National Institutes of Health lawyer Valerie Bonham.
The 13-member advisory commission was established in November 2009 to evaluate bioethical issues concerning healthcare and biomedical research. It has played a central role in investigating federal research on Guatemalan prisoners in the 1940s while advising the White House on the benefits and risks of synthetic biology and assessing the rules that currently protect human research subjects.
"Lisa Lee's background in ethics and policy issues and her deep experience at CDC will prove invaluable as the Commission navigates its next set of timely and sensitive questions," Commission Chairwoman Amy Gutmann said in a statement. "As we welcome Lisa, we also salute Valerie Bonham for her tireless effort in helping the Commission produce its first reports on synthetic biology, unethical research in Guatemala, and human subjects research."
• Reviewing the privacy and access problems raised by the emergence of whole genome sequencing as a diagnostic tool in clinical care and research;
• Considering the issue of neuroethics as it is related to notions of the person and the implications of advances in neuroimaging; and
• Responding to a request from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for ethical advice on the development of medical countermeasures for children.
The commission’s next public meeting is scheduled for May 17 in Washington, D.C.
