Short List of Candidates for the EPA Human Studies Review Board

On October 9, 2008, the EPA, Office of the Science Advisor (OSA) announced a request for nominations of qualified individuals in the areas of bioethics, biostatistics, human health risk assessment and human toxicology to serve on the EPA Human Studies Review Board (HSRB) (Federal Register 73 19, 59623). Information on the HSRB, including the nomination process, appears in the above-referenced Federal Register notice and on the HSRB Web site.

The OSA has reviewed the nominations and identified 6 possible candidates to serve on the HSRB. Brief biographical sketches ("biosketches") on these candidates are provided below. The OSA hereby invite comments from members of the public for relevant information or other documentation that the OSA should consider in the selection of HSRB members. Any information furnished by the public in response to this Web site posting will be combined with information already provided by the candidates, and gathered independently by the OSA. Prior to final selection of HSRB members, the combined information will be reviewed and evaluated for any possible financial conflict of interest or a possible appearance of a lack of impartiality. The information will also be used to ensure appropriate balance and breadth of expertise needed to address the charge to the Board. Candidates not selected for membership might be considered in the future as vacancies become available, as a consultant to the HSRB or as an member or consultant to an HSRB subcommittee. Please e-mail your comments no later than noon, eastern time, September 2, 2009 to Paul Lewis, OSA (lewis.paul@epa.gov).

Vanessa Northington Gamble, MD, Ph.D.

University Professor of Medical Humanities and Professor of History, The George Washington University, Washington, DC

Vanessa Northington Gamble, a physician and medical historian, chaired the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Legacy Committee in 1997 that secured a presidential for the treatment of Africa American patients. Before coming to GW, she taught at Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts, Hampshire College, the University of Wisconsin, and Johns Hopkins University. Appointed head of the Association of American Medical Colleges' (AAMC) Division of Community and Minority Programs in 1999, Professor Gamble has served as consultant or committee member on a range of projects run by national medical organizations, including the Institute of Medicine, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

Dr. Gamble received her bachelor's degree in medical sociology from Hampshire College and her medical and doctorate degrees in history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Sidney Green, Ph.D.

Dr. Green is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the Howard University College of Medicine in Washington D.C. He received his Ph.D. from Howard University in Pharmacology in 1972. He has held previous positions at Covance Laboratories, Inc, Vienna VA as Director of Toxicology, ( 1995-1998), the Food and Drug Administration as Director Division of Toxicological Research, Associate Director for Laboratory Investigations, Chief Whole Animal Toxicology Branch, and Chief Genetic Toxicology Branch. His career at FDA spanned 29 years. He has also served as Chief of the Toxic Effects Branch, 1979-1980, in the old Office of Toxic Substances at the EPA. He has over seventy publications primarily in genetic toxicology, short-term test methodology and policy issues associated with alternatives to toxicological animal tests. He also has expertise in systemic toxicology related to food additives and contaminants. He has received the FDA Commissioner's Special Citation, two Group Recognition Awards and twice received the FDA Award of Merit once as a group award and singularly. It is the highest honor the agency can bestow on employees. He is a past member of the EPA Science Advisory Board, 2002-2008. He has served on numerous National Academy of Sciences review committees and currently is a member of the Committee on Toxicology. He is a past President of the American College of Toxicology, Academy of Toxicological Sciences, National Capital Area chapter of the Society of Toxicology, and the Association of Government Toxicologists. He is a member of the Society of Toxicology, Environmental Mutagen Society, Society for In Vitro Biology, Organization of Black Scientists and the Association of Government Toxicologists. He is a past Chairman of the Membership Committee and past member of the Council of the Society of Toxicology. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Toxicology, Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, Human and Experimental Toxicology, the Journal of Toxicology-Cutaneous & Ocular Toxicology and Biomedical and Environmental Sciences.

Mary Faith Marshall, Ph.D.

Dr. Marshall is Professor of Bioethics and Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center. She serves as a tri-chairman of the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview Ethics Committee and Director of the Ethics Consultation Service. She is former Associate Dean for Social Medicine and Medical Humanities in the Medical School.

Dr. Marshall is a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and the American Association for Bioethics. She is an elected fellow of the American College of Critical Care Medicine and past member of its ethics committee. She is a former fellow of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. She received the Trailblazer Award from the NAACP (Charleston Chapter) in 1999 for her work in perinatal substance abuse and has testified on this subject before Congress and in US District Court. She sits on the ethics committee of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

At the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Marshall served on the first special research ethics review panel advisory to the director and sits on the DSMB for Africa of the Division of Aids, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and on the intramural Cardiology and Hematology Data Safety and Monitoring Boards of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. She has served on multiple special emphasis panels, review panels and study sections at NIH and in the public and private sectors. She is a former member of the Council of Academic Societies of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

At the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services she served as chair of the National Human Research Protections Advisory Committee and has served as a special expert consultant to the Secretary on research involving children and prisoners. At the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science Dr. Marshall served as an expert advisor to the committee, "Assessing the System for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research" and helped create its reports, "Preserving the Public Trust: Accreditation and Human Research Participant Programs" and "Responsible Research: A Systems Approach to Protecting Research Participants." She has been a member of on-site evaluation teams for the Office for Human Research Protections. She chaired the advisory board of the former Partners for Human Research Protections, a joint accreditation program of the National Committee for Quality Assurance and the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Health Care Organizations.

Dr. Marshall received her undergraduate education and a Ph.D. in religious studies (applied ethics) from the University of Virginia where she was the Paddock Graduate Fellow in Biomedical Ethics. Dr. Marshall served on the faculty of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center where she was Director of Advanced Studies in Clinical Ethics and Director of the Health Sciences Center's Ethics Consultation Service. At the Medical University of South Carolina, she was Director of the Program in Bioethics. At Kansas University Medical Center she was Director of the Institute for Bioethics, Law and Policy. Dr. Marshall is a co-author of the first and second editions of the text "Introduction to Clinical Ethics." She has published numerous reports, book chapters, and articles in the fields of clinical and, research ethics, pandemic/disaster resource allocation planning, and has written extensively on ethical issues inherent in perinatal substance abuse/reproductive issues.

William Popendorf, Ph.D.

William Popendorf is a Professor of Industrial Hygiene at Utah State University. He has been on the Board of the American Industrial Hygiene Association and a Director of the American Board of Industrial Hygiene. Dr. Popendorf has taught and conducted research for over thirty years and published more than 65 papers, book chapters, and one text book beginning with pesticide hazards to farm workers in 1972-1992, inorganic dusts in 1978-1982, organic dusts from grains and livestock in 1982-1995, and automotive industry foundries and metal working fluids in 1987-1994, and broader reviews since 1991 culminating in 2006 with Industrial Hygiene Control of Airborne Chemical Hazards. His broad interest has been to develop or/and apply predictive models (many developed in other fields) that describe how physical mechanisms cause (and can be used to control) exposures of workers to organic vapors, hazardous particulate aerosols, and dermally toxic chemicals, with the expectation that such tools will improve the overall practice and knowledge-base of industrial hygiene.

Virginia Ashby Sharpe, Ph.D.

Dr. Sharpe is an ethicist on the staff of the VHA National Center for Ethics in Health Care and a visiting scholar at Georgetown University where she teaches courses in environmental ethics and clinical ethics.

At VHA, Dr. Sharpe supports policy development and implementation on a broad range of ethical issues including adverse event disclosure, conflicts of interest and professionalism, release of protected health information, and organ donation. She also directs the VHA Pandemic Influenza Ethics Initiative, developing ethical guidance and resources for pandemic flu planning and response. Since 1998, Dr. Sharpe has been an advisory board member to the Mothers and Newborns study at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health. This community-based cohort study uses biomarker research and environmental monitoring to study the effects of several common pollutants on children's health in Harlem and Washington Heights.

Dr. Sharpe received her Ph.D. with honors in philosophy from Georgetown University and her A.B. with honors from Smith College. Prior to her work at VHA, she was the director of the Integrity in Science project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Her work at CSPI involved education and advocacy to address conflicts of interest in scientific research and federal, and state science-based policy. Dr. Sharpe was also Deputy Director and an Associate for Biomedical and Environmental Ethics at the Hastings Center, a bioethics education institute in Garrison, NY.

Dr. Sharpe has spoken widely and published numerous books and articles on ethical issues concerning health care and the environment, including Accountability: Patient Safety and Policy Reform. (Georgetown University Press, 2004); "Knowledge, Norms and the Politics of Risk: Ethical Issues in Policy-Relevant Science." In David Bellinger, ed. Human Developmental Neurotoxicology. (New York: Marcel Dekker, 2006): 511-525; "What are We Doing When We're Doing Research on Humans?" Neurotoxicology and Teratology 2002:24(4):451-4.Wolves and Human Communities: Biology, Politics, and Ethics. (Island Press, 2001); and Medical Harm: Historical, Conceptual and Ethical Dimensions of Iatrogenic Illness. (Cambridge U. Press, 1998)

Laurie Zoloth, Ph.D.

Dr. Zoloth is Director of The Center for Bioethics, Science and Society at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, where she is professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics and professor of Religion and Jewish Studies at Northwestern University's Weinberg College of Arts and Science where she is also Director of the Brady Program in Ethics and Civic Life. From 1995-2003 she was a founder and Director of the Program in Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University. In 2001 she was the President of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities a two term member of its founding board, receiving its Distinguished Service Award in 2007. and was a founder and vice president of the Society for Jewish Ethics She served for two terms as member of the NASA National Advisory Council, the nation's highest civilian advisory board for NASA, for which she received the NASA National Public Service Award in 2005, the Executive Committee of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, and she is the Chair of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Bioethics Advisory Board. She has also been on the founding national boards of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanites, the International Society for Stem Cell Research, The Society for Scriptural Reasoning, and NASA's International Planetary Protection Advisory Committee. In 2005 she was honored as the Graduate Theological Union's alumna of the year.

Professor Zoloth has also served on the national advisory boards of the American Association of the Advancement of Science's Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion; The Data Safety Monitoring Board for the NIH International AIDS Clinical Trials Group, and the NIH Asia AIDS DSMB, and the DSMB on research on minorities and health care; The Robert Wood Johnson's Project on Excellence at the End of Life; The American Association for the Advancement of Science's Working Group on Human Germ-Line Interventions and on Stem Cell Research; the Ethics Section of the American Academy of Religion; the Western Jewish Studies Association; The Louis Finkelstein Institute for Jewish Social Ethics; The Park Ridge Center's Project on Judaism and Bioethics, and the editorial boards of The American Society for Law, Medicine and Ethics Journal , Shofar: A Journal of Jewish Studies; The Journal of Clinical Ethics; American Journal of Bioethics; and Second Opinion: A Journal of Health, Faith and Ethics. She was the bioethics consultant to NASA's Ames Research Center's, and NASA's National Interagency National Animal Care and Use Committees.

In 2000, Professor Zoloth was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Virginia in the Department of Religion and The Center for Medical Ethics. She is also co-founder of The Ethics Practice, a group that has provided clinical ethics consultation and education services to health care providers and health care systems nationally. She received her BA in Women's Studies and History from the University of California at Berkeley, her BSN from the University of the State of New York, her MA in English from San Francisco State University, her MA in Jewish Studies and her Ph.D. in Social Ethics at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She has published extensively in the areas of ethics, family, feminist theory, religion and science, Jewish Studies, and social policy in The Hastings Center Report, The Journal of Clinical Ethics, The Kennedy Institutes Journal of Bioethics, Theoretical Medicine, The Cambridge Quarterly, The HEC Forum, Medical Humanities Review, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Tikkun Magazine, Judaism, The Journal of Religious Ethics, and has authored chapters in 27 books. Her book, Health Care and The Ethics of Encounter, on justice, health policy, and the ethics of community, was published in 1999. She is also co-editor of four books, Notes >From a Narrow Ridge: Religion and Bioethics, with Dena Davis; Margin of Error: The Ethics of Mistakes in Medicine, with Susan Rubin; and The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate: Ethics, Religion and Policy, with Karen LeBacqz and Suzanne Holland.

Her current research projects include work on the emerging issues in medical and research genetics, religion and science, and justice in health care delivery. In 1999 she was invited to give testimony to National Bioethics Advisory Board on Jewish philosophy and stem cell research. She has been awarded three faculty recognition awards at SFSU, for teaching large classes, for research, and for community service, and recognized 6 times for excellence by SFSU for her work as faculty advisor to Hillel, the Jewish Student Organization. At Northwestern she received the ASU Teaching Award in 2004. In 2000 she was awarded a NIH ELSI (Ethical Legal and Social Issues of the Human Genome) Grant to explore the ethical issues after the mapping of the human genome. In 2001, she was named as principle investigator for the International Project on Judaism and Genetics, co-sponsored by the AAAS, and supported by the Haas Foundation and the Greenwall Fund.

She has been invited to give testimony on the issues of science, bioethics and religion to the National Bioethics Advisory Council, Texas Legislature, the Chicago City Council, The State of Illinois, and the US Senate. She has served as a visiting lecturer on this topic at universities in Japan, Korea, Norway, Holland, Germany, England, and Mexico.

She lives in Evanston Illinois, with her husband, Dan Zoloth Dorfman, an attorney, and has five children and two grandchildren.