Kyle Anstey, PhD
Kyle Anstey, PhD, is senior fellow in bioethics at University Health Network (UHN) and the Joint Centre for Bioethics, University of Toronto. Dr. Anstey provides ethics consultation services, organizational support and education to a wide range of audiences. He is also a member of UHN’s Research Ethics Board, Quality of Care Committee and Diversity Council.
Dr. Anstey completed a postdoctoral clinical fellowship in bioethics at the Joint Centre for Bioethics. He obtained his doctorate at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. Prior to undertaking his doctorate, Anstey completed a master’s in bioethics at Monash University, and a graduate clinical bioethics practicum and an honours philosophy degree at Queen’s University.
His main research interests relate to disability studies and new reproductive technology, community care ethics and organizational ethics.
Dr. Anstey also established and chairs the ISIS Regional Fertility Centre Ethics Committee.
Norman Fost, MD, MPH
Norman Fost, MD, MPH, is professor of pediatrics and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin. He also serves as vice chair of the Department of Medical History and Bioethics and director of the Program in Medical Ethics, which he founded in 1973, and was founder and head of the Child Protection Team from 1973 to 2006. Dr. Fost works as a general pediatrician. He is chairman of the Hospital Ethics Committee, and chairman of the Health Sciences IRB.
Dr. Fost has extensive experience in ethical and legal issues in health care. He has been chair of the University of Wisconsin Health Sciences IRB for 29 years. He has published numerous articles on human subjects research, genetic screening, euthanasia of handicapped newborns, access to human growth hormone and the use of performance-enhancing drugs. He taught courses on ethical and regulatory issues in human-subjects research at the FDA Staff College. For the past seven years he has taught a similar course at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions as part of their graduate program in clinical trials. Dr. Fost served on numerous federal committees and commissions on a variety of ethical and regulatory issues, including President Clinton’s Health Care Task Force. He currently serves on the FDA’s Pediatric Advisory Committee on Children’s Drugs, and chairs the FDA Pediatric Ethics Subcommittee. He was a member of the National Academy of Science Committee on Guidelines for Stem Cell Research whose report was published in 2005.
Dr. Fost was director of the Pediatric Residency Training Program for 21 years and vice chairman of the Department of Pediatrics from 1985 to1995. In 1996-1997 he was the DeCamp Visiting Professor of Bioethics at Princeton. Dr. Fost served on the Princeton University Board of Trustees from 1994 to 1998.
Dr. Fost is a graduate of Princeton (AB 1960), Yale (MD 1964) and Harvard (MPH 1973). He completed residency training in pediatrics and two years as chief resident at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was a fellow in the Harvard Program in Law, Medicine and Ethics during 1972-1973.
In 1997, Dr. Fost received the Nellie Westermann Prize for Research Ethics and was runner-up for the prize in 1976 and 1989. In 2003, he was awarded the William G. Bartholome Award for Excellence in Ethics by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and in 2006 received the Health Improvement Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Human Research Protection, an award created by the U.S. DHHS Office of Human Research Protection.
Dr. Fost has been a frequent guest on national television shows, including Nightline, Frontline, Crossfire, Donahue, Good Morning America, The News Hour, ESPN's SportsCenter, HBO’s Real Sports, and Oprah.
Christine Harrison, PhD
Christine Harrison, PhD, is director of bioethics at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. She is associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics and a member of the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Harrison received her BA and MA from the University of Guelph and her PhD in philosophy from McMaster University, both in Ontario.
The Bioethics Department at The Hospital for Sick Children is one of the few hospital-based, clinically focused pediatric bioethics services in Canada. It provides:
- An ethics consultation service to patients, families and staff
- Education to a wide range of learners
- Organizational support (e.g., policy development and ethics rounds for senior management)
- Support to researchers
Dr. Harrison is course director in the Masters of Health Science in Bioethics program at the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, and a member of the graduate faculty in the genetic counseling program.
She is past president of the Canadian Bioethics Society, and served several terms as chair of the Bioethics Committee of the Canadian Pediatric Society.
Dr. Harrison has been involved with several research teams, contributing bioethics input to areas of research where the care of children and bioethics intersect. She co-authored numerous publications with these teams. Some of her current interests include ethical aspects of healthcare decision-making regarding children, end-of-life care for children and complementary and alternative medicine.
Annie Janvier, MD, FRCPC
Annie Janvier, MD, FRCPC is a neonatologist working at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada. She works with patients and families confronted with difficult decisions such as withholding or withdrawing therapy, end-of-life issues and decision-making in the face of uncertainty.
Dr. Janvier is finishing a doctorate in bioethics. She researches clinical ethics and clinical medicine. Her main interests in bioethics are extremely premature infants and other incompetent patients with regards to the opinions and attitudes of caregivers and society. Her doctorate in bioethics focuses on how premature infants are valued compared to other incompetent patients, the personhood concept and the “best interest” principle in clinical ethics. Janvier is also involved with ethics of screening, palliative care for fetuses and neonates, third-term pregnancy termination, artificial reproductive technologies, resource allocation and informed consent.
As the bioethicist of the CEDUSSIPE (government committee working on public policy), Dr. Janvier is responsible for the pediatric residency bioethics curriculum, and also teaches bioethics to medicine undergraduates.
She has authored and co-authored recent publications on ethics and neonatology.
Kellie Lang, JD
Kellie Lang, JD, is an instructor for the Center for the Study of Bioethics at the Medical College of Wisconsin. A member of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin’s (CHW) Ethics Advisory Committee, Lang serves as co-chair of its Education Subcommittee. She is a member of CHW’s Human Research Review Board and a member of Columbia-St. Mary’s Hospital Ethics Committee. Prior to earning her law degree, Ms. Lang was a pediatric nurse.
David Magnus, PhD
David Magnus, PhD, is associate professor of pediatrics and medicine at Stanford University, where he is director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and chair of the ethics committee for both the Stanford Hospital and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. He received his PhD in philosophy from Stanford University. He serves on the California Human Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee.
Dr. Magnus served on the National Research Council Ad Hoc Committee on the Bioconfinement of Genetically Engineered Organisms, and also as an expert consultant for the World Bank on food security and biotechnology and a consultant for the National Conference of State Legislators on cloning. In 2003-2004, he was a member of the Secretary of Agriculture’s Advisory Committee on Biotechnology in the 21st Century.
Dr. Magnus has published articles on a range of topics in bioethics, particularly on issues concerning genetic technology, cloning and stem cell research. He is the principle editor of a collection of essays, Who Owns Life? His publications have appeared in Science, Nature Biotechnology, and the British Medical Journal. He serves as associate editor of the American Journal of Bioethics.
In addition to his scholarly work, Dr. Magnus has published a number of editorial pieces in prominent newspapers, and had appeared on many national television shows including, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, FOX News Sunday, and ABC's World News Tonight, as well as several nationally syndicated radio shows. He has been quoted in Time, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and USA Today, among other publications.
Mary Anderlik Majumder, JD, PhD
Mary Anderlik Majumder, JD, PhD, is an assistant professor of medicine with the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine. She received her law degree from Yale Law School in 1989 and her doctorate from the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University in 1997. She teaches ethics and professionalism to medical students and residents at Baylor and participates in ethics education for the faculty and staff at Baylor-affiliated hospitals. Majumder’s research interests are in the areas of end-of-life decision-making, genomics and biotechnology, and healthcare organization and access to healthcare.
John J. Paris, SJ, PhD
John J. Paris, SJ, PhD, is Michael P. Walsh Professor of Bioethics at Boston College. He is also clinical professor of family medicine and community health at Tufts Medical School and adjunct professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
The Rev. Paris has served as consultant to the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethics in Medicine, the United States Senate Committee on Aging and the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. He has published over 100 articles in the area of law, medicine and ethics in publications such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of Intensive Care Medicine and The Wall Street Journal. He is the ethics section editor of the Journal of Perinatology.
Paris served as a consultant and expert witness in many landmark biomedical cases including Quinlan, Brophy, Jobes, Baby K and Gilgunn.
Rebecca Pentz, PhD
Rebecca Pentz, PhD, is professor of hematology and oncology in Research Ethics in the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University.
Dr. Pentz does empirical ethics research on issues such as informed consent, phase 1 research, pediatric bone marrow transplant, disclosure of research results and international bioethics. She also serves as a resource throughout Emory to help researchers design ethically sound and sensitive protocols. She designs ethics companion studies for all of the major grants submitted by Winship investigators.
Dr. Pentz was clinical ethicist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. As clinical ethicist, she worked closely with patients and families struggling with end-of-life issues.
Dr. Pentz has several national commitments. She is on the St. Jude Data Safety Monitoring Committee and several of the Children’s Oncology Group’s ethics and research committees. She also sits on two Centers for Disease Control Internal Review Boards (IRBs), including the one that reviews bioterrorism research. She speaks nationally on research ethics, pediatric ethics and issues in oncology such as futile care.
Dr. Pentz is author and co-author of numerous recent publications on research and ethics.
Lainie Friedman Ross, MD, PhD
Lainie Friedman Ross, MD, PhD, holds the Carolyn and Matthew Bucksbaum Professorship at the University of Chicago. Dr. Ross is a professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Chicago. She is section chief of Community Health Sciences in the Institute for Molecular Pediatric Sciences, associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics and director of the Ethics Consultation Services at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Ross serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Bioethics and the Committee on Bioethics. She is also a member of Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network and United Network for Organ Sharing (OPTN/UNOS) Ethics Committee.
Dr. Ross earned an AB from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1982. She earned her MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1986. Dr. Ross received her pediatrics training at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Babies Hospital of Columbia University. After finishing her medical training, Dr. Ross matriculated at Yale University's Department of Philosophy. She earned an MPhil in 1992 and her PhD in 1996.
Dr. Ross’s research interests are ethical issues in genetics, pediatrics, human experimentation and transplantation. Her first book, Children, Families and Health Care Decision Making, was published by Oxford University Press in 1998. Her second book, Children in Medical Research: Access Versus Protection, was published by Oxford University Press in 2006. She is writing a book on the ethical and policy issues of genetic testing and screening of newborns and children.