Speaker biographies

Misha Angrist is an assistant professor of the practice at the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy. He has had his entire genome sequenced and made public. His book about this experience is called Here Is a Human Being: At the Dawn of Personal Genomics (HarperCollins, November 2010).

John E. Calfee, resident scholar at AEI, is an economist who studies the pharmaceutical industry and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), along with the economics of tobacco, tort liability, and patents. He previously worked at the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics. He has also taught marketing and consumer behavior at the business schools of the University of Maryland–College Park and Boston University. While Mr. Calfee’s current writings are mostly on pharmaceutical markets and FDA regulation, his academic articles and opinion pieces have covered a variety of topics, from patent law and tort liability to advertising and consumer information. He is the author of Prices, Markets, and the Pharmaceutical Revolution (AEI Press, 2000) and coauthor of Biotechnology and the Patent System (AEI Press, 2007). He has testified before Congress and federal agencies on numerous topics, including alcohol advertising, biodefense vaccine research, international drug prices, and, most recently, FDA oversight of drug safety.

Gregory Conko is a senior fellow and the director of food and drug policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.–based public policy organization. His research focuses on issues of food- and pharmaceutical-safety regulation, and the general treatment of health risks in public policy. He is particularly interested in the debate over the safety of biotechnology and bioengineered products, as well as the application of the precautionary principle to domestic and international environmental and health regulations. Mr. Conko’s book, The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution (Praeger, 2004), coauthored with Henry I. Miller, was named by Barron’s as one of the twenty-five best books of 2004. His other writings have appeared in such journals as Nature Biotechnology, Transgenic Research, Politics and the Life Sciences, the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology, and the Cumberland Law Review, and in such newspapers as the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Mr. Conko is a member of the Board of Scientific and Policy Advisors for the New York–based American Council on Science and Health. He was a principal investigator for the California Council on Science and Technology’s 2002 report Benefits and Risks of Food Biotechnology. He was selected by the American Swiss Foundation as one of twenty-five “Young Leaders” from the United States in 2001 and was named by Nature Biotechnology to its shortlist of “Who’s Who in Biotechnology” in 2006. Before joining the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 1994, Mr. Conko was a research associate with the Capital Research Center in Washington, D.C.

Maureen Cropper is a professor of economics at the University of Maryland, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, and a former lead economist at the World Bank. Previously, Ms. Cropper was chair of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Economics Advisory Committee and president of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. She is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her past research focused on valuing environmental amenities (especially environmental health effects), the discounting of future health benefits, and the tradeoffs implicit in environmental regulations. Her current research focuses on energy efficiency in India, the impact of climate change on migration, and the benefits of collective action in pandemic flu control. Ms. Cropper recently served on the InterAcademy Council’s committee to review the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Jon Entine, a former Emmy-winning producer for NBC News and ABC News, researches and writes about corporate responsibility and science and society. His books include No Crime But Prejudice: Fischer Homes, the Immigration Fiasco, and Extra-judicial Prosecution (AtlasBooks, May 2009), on prosecutorial excesses; Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People (Grand Central Publishing, 2007), which focuses on the genetics of race; Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture (AEI Press, 2006), about the genetic modification of food and farming; Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing (AEI Press, 2005), which reveals the effects of social investing on pension funds; and the bestselling Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk about It (Public Affairs, 2000), based on an award-winning NBC News documentary. Currently, Mr. Entine is an adviser to Global Governance Watch, a project that examines transparency and accountability issues at the United Nations (UN), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and related international organizations, and analyzes the impact of UN agencies and NGOs on governments and corporations. He is also working on a book exploring the revolutionary impact of genomic research on medical treatments and traditional perceptions of human limits and capabilities.

Kenneth P. Green, an environmental scientist by training, has studied public policy involving risk, regulation, and the environment for more than sixteen years at public policy institutions across North America. He is currently a resident scholar at AEI and interim director of AEI’s Center for Regulatory Studies. Mr. Green is the author of numerous policy studies, magazine articles, newspaper columns, and encyclopedia and book chapters, and he wrote a textbook for middle school students entitled Global Warming: Understanding the Debate (Enslow, 2002). He has testified before regulatory and legislative bodies at both the state and federal levels, and he speaks frequently to the public and in the media. Mr. Green has twice served as an expert reviewer for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Mark Helfand, M.D., is a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at the Oregon Health & Science University and a practicing physician at the Portland VA Medical Center. Recently, Dr. Helfand served on the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Comparative Effectiveness Research Prioritization. He has been a leader in methods for comparative-effectiveness research; from 1998 to 2002, he led a team that helped the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force prioritize topics and develop evidence-based guidelines. In the area of comparative effectiveness, Dr. Helfand was a founder of the Drug Effectiveness Review Project and, since 2004, has served as director of the Scientific Resource Center for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Effective Health Care Program. He has directed the Oregon Evidence-based Practice Center since 1997 and is also editor-in-chief of the journal Medical Decision Making.

Paul Kim is a partner with Foley Hoag LLP and advises clients on legal, legislative, and regulatory issues in food, drug, and device law; Medicare and Medicaid coverage and reimbursement; and the conduct of clinical research. He represents leading biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical-device companies before Congress, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Mr. Kim has been named among the top food and drug attorneys and health care lobbyists by the Hill and the Washingtonian. Previously, Mr. Kim served as Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s deputy staff director for health on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, counsel to Representative Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), and assistant director for government relations at the American Foundation for AIDS Research. In the Senate, he was a committee professional staff member for Senator David Pryor (D-Ark.), chairman of the Special Committee on Aging, member of the Finance Committee, and a health policy fellow with Senator Kennedy’s Committee on Labor and Human Resources. He has also worked for Novartis and in the FDA’s Office of the Commissioner under Dr. David Kessler. 

Randall Lutter is a visiting scholar at Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. He has more than twenty years of senior experience in the management and evaluation of programs regulating health, safety, and environmental risks, serving in three different federal agencies for four presidents. From August 2009 until January 2010, Mr. Lutter was senior economist at the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB), focusing on measuring the cost-effectiveness of federal regulations. Until August 2009, he was deputy commissioner for policy at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). There, he led an effort to prevent economically motivated adulteration of FDA-regulated products. Mr. Lutter also played a lead role in articulating the FDA’s concerns about the risks of importing unapproved pharmaceutical products and its policy on genetically engineered animals. In addition, he engineered changes to promote greater transparency and accountability regarding the FDA’s advisory committees, including more stringent standards for granting waivers of conflicts of interest. Before joining the FDA in 2003, Mr. Lutter was a resident scholar at AEI and a fellow at the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, covering topics from air pollution to food safety and genetically engineered animals. He was also senior economist for regulation and the environment at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, served at OMB in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and taught economics at the School of Management at the State University of New York–Buffalo. Coeditor of a book on environmental policymaking in the White House, Mr. Lutter has authored or coauthored numerous articles in Science, Environmental Science & Technology, the Journal of Political Economy, the Energy Journal, and Regulation, as well as popular media like the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Times.
 
Richard A. Miller, M.D., is Board-certified in internal medicine and medical oncology. At Stanford, he pioneered the use of monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of lymphomas. In 1985, he cofounded IDEC Pharmaceuticals, becoming a director and its vice president of research and clinical. At IDEC, he led R&D efforts in the development of monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of lymphomas, which resulted in the approval of rituximab (Rituxan), now widely used in the therapy of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and various autoimmune diseases. In 1991, Dr. Miller founded Pharmacyclics Inc., becoming a director and its president and CEO. At Pharmacyclics, Dr. Miller developed novel classes of pharmaceuticals to treat cancer and immune-mediated diseases. These drugs are now in phase one, two, and three clinical trials. Currently, Dr. Miller is the founder, president, and CEO of Principia Biopharma, a startup biotech company developing novel drugs for cancer and immune diseases. He is currently an adjunct clinical professor of medicine in oncology at Stanford University, where he has ongoing teaching and patient-care responsibilities. He is the author of over 120 scientific publications and inventor on numerous issued patents, and is frequently invited to speak at various scientific and business conferences. Dr. Miller has published on various topics related to Food and Drug Administration regulation of pharmaceuticals and innovation; several have been published in the Wall Street Journal.

Robert Mendelsohn, the Edwin Weyerhaeuser Davis Professor of Forest Policy at Yale University, has written over one hundred peer-reviewed articles and edited six books. The focus of his research is the valuation of the environment. He has developed methods to value natural ecosystems, including coral reefs, old-growth forests, nontimber forest products, ecotourism, and outdoor recreation. He has also developed methods to value pollution, including emissions of criteria pollutants and hazardous waste sites. His most recent work values the impact of greenhouse gases, including the effects of climate change on agriculture, forests, water resources, energy, and coasts. This research carefully integrates adaptation into impact assessment and has recently been extended to developing countries around the world. He has also participated in studies of nonrenewable resources, forest management, and carbon sequestration in forests. Mr. Mendelsohn is a fellow of Ezra Stiles College.

W. David Montgomery is vice president of Charles River Associates, where he advises clients on how future climate policies and other changes in energy markets and policy could affect their asset value, investment decisions, and strategic direction. Mr. Montgomery has published extensively on energy and environmental regulation and has been a frequent witness at hearings on energy and climate policy before the U.S. Congress and state agencies. He was a principal lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s second assessment report, working group III, dealing with the costs of mitigation; and he has served as an expert reviewer on the third and fourth reports. Mr. Montgomery’s recent studies deal with the economic impact of climate policies, including low-carbon fuel standards; the design of R&D policy; and how economic and political institutions affect the design and effectiveness of climate policies. Before joining Charles River Associates, Mr. Montgomery was assistant director of the Congressional Budget Office and deputy assistant secretary for policy in the U.S. Department of Energy, and he taught economics at the California Insitute of Technology and Stanford University. He also received the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists’ 2005 award for a “Publication of Enduring Quality” for his pioneering work on emissions trading.

Roger Sedjo is a senior fellow at and the director of Resources for the Future’s Center for Forest Economics and Policy. His research interests include global environmental problems, climate change and biodiversity, public-lands issues, the long-term sustainability of forests, industrial forestry and demand, timber-supply modeling, forest biotechnology, and land-use change. He has written or edited fifteen books related to forestry and natural resources, and has published hundreds of articles. Mr. Sedjo served on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Committee of Scientists and cochaired the committee of authors who wrote the chapter on biological sinks for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s third assessment report on climate-change mitigation through forestry and other land-use measures. He also participated in the panel’s second and fourth assessment reports. Mr. Sedjo has been a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and other international organizations in more than a dozen countries, including Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, New Zealand, Russia, Romania, Estonia, and Thailand.

Christina Hoff Sommers, who previously taught ethics as a philosophy professor, is best known for her critique of late-twentieth-century feminism. She is also known for her extensive writing, including Who Stole Feminism? (Touchstone Books, 1995) and The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men (Touchstone Books, 2001). Her textbook, Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life, a bestseller in college ethics, will soon appear in its eighteenth edition. She recently edited The Science on Women and Science (AEI Press, 2009) and is preparing to write a book on the lost history of conservative feminism.

Dietrich Stephan is a widely recognized visionary in the field of molecular medicine and serves as the president and CEO of the Institute for Individualized Health. He founded the institute in 2009 in his quest to change the medical paradigm from reactive and generalized to proactive and personalized through the implementation of molecularly informed, tactical solutions. Dr. Stephan is also a pioneer in personalized medicine, working for over a decade to develop early diagnostic tests and knowledge-based therapies for the many different subtypes of common human diseases. He has worked on the interface between academia and industry where “translational medicine” occurs. Dr. Stephan founded a number of companies, including Navigenics, Amnestix, and Aeuon Inc. Before this, he was senior investigator and founding chairman of the Department of Neurogenomics at the nonprofit Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, and later moved into the role of deputy director of discovery research. Dr. Stephan and his colleagues were among the first to use the latest genome scanning technologies to identify genetic links for over two dozen diseases, including autism, ALS, SIDS, and Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Stephan has held faculty appointments at Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, and the University of Arizona. He is the author of over 140 scientific publications and has been highlighted twice on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for his contributions to the field of medicine.

Benjamin Zycher is the president of Benjamin Zycher Economics Associates Inc., a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, and an adjunct professor of economics and business at the Martin V. Smith School of Business and Economics, California State University–Channel Islands. He is an associate in the Intelligence Community Associates Program of the Office of Economic Analysis at the U.S. Department of State. He was a senior staff economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from July 1981 to July 1983. At AEI, he is working on a monograph that will describe the economic viability of renewable energy.

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