Task Force on Ethics Reform: Membership
Chair
Bartha Knoppers, PhD (McGill University)
Bartha Knoppers, PhD, is Director of the Centre of Genomics and Policy, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Human Genetics, McGill University, Canada Research Chair in Law and Medicine 2001- and the holder of Chaire d’excellence Pierre Fermat (France) (2006-2008), she was named Distinguished Visiting Scientist (Netherlands Genomics Initiative) (2009-2011). Formerly, Professor at the Faculté de droit, Université de Montréal (1985-2009) and Senior Researcher at the Centre de recherche en droit public (C.R.D.P.) (1996-2009). Graduate of McMaster University (B.A.), University of Alberta (M.A.), McGill University (LL.B., B.C.L.), Cambridge University, U.K., (D.L.S.), Sorbonne Paris I) (Phd.) she was admitted to the Bar of Québec in 1985. Professor Knoppers was the former, Chair of the International Ethics committee of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO), (1996-2004), and member of the International Bioethics Committee of the United Nations, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) which drafted the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1993-1997). Co-Founder of the International Institute of Research in Ethics and Biomedicine (IIREB) (2000 – 2009), she founded the Population Project in Genomics (P3G) and CARTaGENE in 2003. From 2000-2006 she served on the Board of Genome Canada, became Chair of the Ethics Working Party of the International Stem Cell Forum, Co-Chair of the Sampling/ELSI Committee of the 1000 Genomes Project (2008-) and a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) (2009-).
Professor Knoppers received a Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa from the University of Waterloo (2001), a Doctor of Medicine Honoris Causa from Université de Paris V (René Descartes) (2002), a Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa from McMaster University, Ontario (2007) and a Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa from the University of Alberta in 2008. In 2002, she was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, selected as one of the 50 nation builders in Canada by the Globe and Mail, and named Officer of the Order of Canada. In that same year, she was elected Fellow of The Hastings Center (Bioethics), New York, member of the International Ethics Committee of the World Anti-Doping Agency and, in April 2005, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS). She was elected Governor of the Quebec Bar in 2006 and in 2007 was elected Advocatus Emeritus. In 2011, she received the ACFAS Prix Jacques Rousseau for interdisciplinarity.
Members
Tim Caulfield, PhD (University of Alberta)
Timothy Caulfield is a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy and a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. He was the Research Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta from 1993 to 2011 and is now leading the Faculty of Law’s Health Law and Science Policy Group (HeaLS). Over the past several years he has been involved in a variety of interdisciplinary research endeavours that have allowed him to publish over 250 articles and book chapters. He is a Health Senior Scholar with the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research and the Principal Investigator for a number of large interdisciplinary projects that explore the ethical, legal and health policy issues associated with a range of topics, including stem cell research, genetics, patient safety, the prevention of chronic disease, obesity policy, the commercialization of research, complementary and alternative medicine and access to health care. Professor Caulfield is and has been involved with a number of national and international policy and research ethics committees, including Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, Genome Canada’s Science Advisory Committee, , the Ethics and Public Policy Committee for the International Society for Stem Cell Research and the Federal Panel on Research Ethics. He teaches biotechnology in the Faculty of Law and is the editor for theHealth Law Journal and Health Law Review. He also writes frequently for the popular press and is the author of The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness (Penguin Canada, 2011).
Professor Caulfield has won numerous awards for his academic work. In 2007, for example, Professor Caulfield became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is also a member of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and has won the University of Alberta's Martha Cook Piper Prize for research excellence and the Alumni Horizon Award. In 2004, he was awarded the university's media relations award in recognition of his work with popular press.
Jim Lavery, PhD (University of Toronto)
Jim Lavery is a research scientist in the Centre for Research on Inner City Health and Centre for Global Health Research, St. Michael's Hospital, and an Assistant Professfor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Toronto. Jim received M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees at the Institute of Medical Science and Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto and subsequently received a post-doctoral fellowship in applied ethics and health policy from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, during which he studied priority-setting in home care in Canada at the Queen's University Health Policy Research Unit.
Most recently, Jim spent 3 years at the Fogarty International Center, and Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center Department of Clinical Bioethics, both at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. While at the NIH he worked on ethical and regulatory issues in international research and chaired a working group of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that issued a report on equivalent protections in international research. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the CIHR Institute of Infection and Immunity and a member of the Board of Directors of Public Responsibility in Medicine in Research.
Jim's current research interests are in ethics and health research systems in developing countries, the U.S. Common Rule regulation on equivalent protections in international research, and ethical issues in research with marginalized populations. He has recently edited a book of case studies in international research ethics with colleagues at the NIH, which will be published in 2005 by Oxford University Press.
Michael McDonald, PhD (University of British Columbia, retired)
Michael McDonald was the founding Director of the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics (1990-2002). He received an Honours BA in Philosophy from the University of Toronto and an MA and PhD in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. From 1969 to 1990, he was a member of the Philosophy Department at the University of Waterloo.
In 2009, the Canadian Bioethics Society gave its Lifetime Achievement Award to McDonald for his "outstanding contribution to the Healthcare Ethics in Canada". Complete In 2006, the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada presented McDonald with the designation of Honorary Certified General Accountant for his contribution to professional ethics education for the Association.
McDonald also headed the creation of two websites with Dr. Holly Longstaff and Nina Preto: Stem Cell Ethics Education is an educational resource dedicated to helping Canadian stem cell researchers navigate ethical issues in their work; QI4 Research Ethics is a website designed for gathering information that will promote better communication amongst and between researchers, research administrators, research participants, and research ethics committees.
Daryl Pullman, PhD (Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Daryl Pullman is Professor of Medical Ethics in the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University. He is cross-appointed to the School of Nursing and to the Department of Philosophy, and has a clinical ethics appointment with the Provincial Health Ethics Network for Newfoundland & Labrador (PHENNL).
Daryl earned his MA and PhD degrees in philosophy at the University of Waterloo. After completing his graduate work he taught for 8 years at the University of Waterloo Centre for Society, Technology and Values. During that time he worked as a health care ethics consultant to a number of hospitals, nursing homes, and related organizations in southwestern Ontario.
Since coming to Memorial in 1998, Daryl has been centrally involved in a number of provincial initiatives related to health policy and health care ethics, including the establishment of a Provincial Health Research Ethics Authority and PHENNL. He is currently a member of the CIHR/MS Society of Canada Scientific Expert Working Group on Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency and Multiple Sclerosis. He is a former member of the Advisory Board for the CIHR Genetics Institute, and has served as co-chair of the Ethics Oversight Committee for the Canadian Longitudinal Study of Aging. He has also been a member of the CIHR Standing Committee on Ethics, as well as the Stem Cell Oversight Committee.
Daryl's current research interests focus primarily on issues related to genetics research and therapy. Other research interests include research ethics, ethics and ageing, and privacy and access to health information. He has a continuing philosophical interest in the concept of human dignity and its foundational role in moral epistemology.
Daryl has published numerous articles, book chapters, and abstracts in scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to public media on a variety of health related issues.
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