THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

      PRESIDENT ANNOUNCES ETHICAL, SCIENTIFIC AND MEDICAL EXPERTS  
                             AS MEMBERS OF  
           ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The President today announced his intention to appoint fifteen men and women to serve as members of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, created by an Executive Order on January 18, 1994. The Advisory Committee was created to review the ethical and scientific standards of any government-sponsored human experiments, since 1946, which involved intentional exposure to ionizing radiation.

The Advisory Committee will provide advice and recommendations to the Interagency Working Group on Human Radiation on issues such as whether there was a clear medical or scientific purpose for the experiments, if there was proper informed consent, or if appropriate medical follow-up was conducted.

The Advisory Committee is to submit an interim report in six months after it begins work and a final report in one year. The Advisory Committee will comply with the terms of the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

The Advisory Committee will be chaired by Dr. Ruth Faden, a medical ethicist from Johns Hopkins University. A list of the other members of the Committee is attached.

In other actions:

• The White House today issued a Presidential Memorandum instructing all Executive Departments and Agencies to review their policies on the protection of human subjects in scientific research, and to strictly enforce them. Currently, all human subject research must meet stringent informed consent guidelines that are established by federal regulation. All experiments are reviewed by Institutional Review Boards --local committees that are required at every research site that ensure adherence to informed consent guidelines and other ethical standards. In light of actions from decades ago that have recently come to light, the Memorandum directs each Executive Department and Agency to exercise constant care in these matters.

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CANDIDATES FOR ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS

Ethicists

Ruth R. Faden, Ph.D., M.P.H. - professor of health policy and management and director, Program in Law, Ethics and Health, Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD; senior research scholar, Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

Ruth Macklin, Ph. D. - head, Division of Philosophy and History of Medicine, professor of bioethics, Shoshanah Trachtenberg Frackman Faculty Scholar in Biomedical Ethics, Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY.

Patricia A. King, J.D. - professor of law, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.; adjunct professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.

Jay Katz, M.D. - Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor Emeritus of Law, Medicine and Psychiatry and Harvey L. Karp Professorial Lecturer in Law and Psychoanalysis, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

Historian

Susan E. Lederer, Ph. D. - associate professor, Department of Humanities, The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Pennsylvania State University, Hershey, PA.

Attorney

Kenneth R. Feinberg, J.D. - Kenneth R. Feinberg & Associates, Washington, D.C.; adjunct professor of law, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.; member, Presidential Commission on Catastrophic Nuclear Accidents, 1989-90.

Epidemiologist

Duncan Thomas, Ph.D. - professor, Preventive Medicine, University of Southern California School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA.

Clinicians, Radiation Therapy/Nuclear Medicine

Eli J. Glatstein, M.D. - professor and chairman, Department of Radiation Oncology, Simmons Cancer Center, Southwestern Medical Center, University of Texas, Dallas, TX.

Henry D. Royal, M.D. - associate director, Division of Nuclear Medicine, Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology and professor of radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO.

Mary Ann Stevenson, M.D. - assistant professor in radiation therapy, Joint Center for Radiation Therapy and deputy chief, Department of Radiation Oncology, New England Deaconess Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.

Clinician, Non-Radiation/Public Health

Reed V. Tuckson, M.D. - president, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, Los Angeles, CA.

Military Medicine Specialist

Philip K. Russell, M.D. - professor of international health, School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.

Radiation Biologist

Nancy L. Oleinick, Ph.D. - professor of radiation biology and biochemistry, Environmental Health Science and Oncology, School of Medicine and director, Division of Biochemistry and Oncology, Department of Radiology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH.

General Scientist

Frank Press, Ph.D. - fellow, Cecil and Ida Green Fellowship, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C.; former president, National Academy of Scientists.

Citizen Representative

Lois L. Norris - community representative, Institutional Review Board, University of Nebraska; retired second vice president, Omaha National Bank and Omaha National Corporation, Omaha, NE;

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