Science, Money and Politics: Three Stories about Cancers in Women

Lunch provided at noonTalk begins at 12:10 pmThe stories of how products and services were developed for cancers of women's reproductive organs proffer lessons about the complex ecosystem that sustains, and sometimes impedes, medical innovation. The stories center on controversies over patenting the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, development of Herceptin to treat breast cancer, and NIH's recent agreement with the Lacks family over research involving HeLa cells.Robert Cook-Deegan, MD is a research professor at the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, where he served as the director of the IGSP's Center for Genome Ethics, Law & Policy from 2002 to 2012. He is also a research professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy. Prior to arriving at Duke, he served as the director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellowship program at the Institute of Medicine (IOM), National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of The Gene Wars: Science, Politics, and the Human Genome (New York: Norton, 1994) and an author on over 200 articles.