Institute for Corean-American Studies




Robert Mullan Cook-Deegan, M.D.
Biographic Sketch

Robert Cook-Deegan directs the National Cancer Policy Board, Institute of Medicine (IOM) and Commission on Life Sciences (National Academy of Sciences). He is also a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Investigator at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, where he is writing a primer on how national policy decisions are made about health research.

In spring 1996, he was a Cecil and Ida Green Fellow at the University of Texas, Dallas, following his work on the report Allocating Federal Funds for Science and Technology (the "Press Report"). From 1991 through 1994, he directed IOM's Division of Biobehavioral Sciences and Mental Disorders (since renamed Neuroscience and Behavioral Health). He worked for the National Center for Human Genome Research 1989-1990, after serving Acting Executive Director of the Biomedical Ethics Advisory Committee of the U.S. Congress 1988-1989.

An Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant culminated in The Gene Wars: Science, Politics, and the Human Genome (New York: Norton, 1994; paperback 1996; tr. Korean 1995, Japanese 1996). A complementary National Science Foundation grant established a Human Genome Archive at the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature at Georgetown University, containing his files and interview transcripts. He continues as a consultant to the DNA Patent Database at Georgetown University.

Dr. Cook-Deegan came to Washington in 1982 as a congressional science fellow and stayed five more years, ultimately becoming a Senior Associate at the congressional Office of Technology Assessment. Before going to Washington, Dr. Cook-Deegan did two years of postdoctoral research on the molecular biology of oncogenes with Lasker Award scientist Raymond L. Erikson after completing his internship in pathology at the University of Colorado 1979-1982. He received his bachelor's degree in chemistry, magna cum laude, in 1975 from Harvard College, and his M.D. degree from the University of Colorado in 1979. He chairs the Royalty Fund Advisory Committee for the Alzheimer's Association, is Secretary and Trustee of the Foundation for Genetic Medicine, and retired this year as chair of Section X (Social Impacts of Science and Engineering) for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he is also a Fellow. For the past three years, he has been a tutor and seminar leader for the Stanford-in-Washington program. Dr. Cook-Deegan was a member of the Board of Directors, Physicians for Human Rights, 1988-1996, with whom he participated in human rights missions to Turkey, Iraq, and Panama.

 



ICAS Web Site Links for Robert Mullan Cook-Deegan:

ICAS Spring 2000 Symposium






This page last updated 4/7/2000 jdb




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