Healthy Futures: Medical Regulation and Human Agency
Speakers' Biographies
Professor John Abraham
John Abraham is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for
Research in Health and Medicine (CRHaM) at University of Sussex. As
Specialist Expert Adviser to the UK House of Commons Parliamentary
Health Select Committee, he was centrally involved in its 8-month
'Inquiry into the Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry'
(2004-2005). He is author of three research monographs on the politics
and sociology of pharmaceuticals in UK, US and EU, namely, Science, Politics and the Pharmaceutical Industry (UCL/St Martins Press, 1995), The Therapeutic Nightmare: The Battle over the World's most Controversial Sleeping Pill (Earthscan, 1999), and Regulating Medicines in Europe: Competition Expertise and Public Health (Routledge, 2000), and is editor of Regulation of the Pharmaceutical Industry (Palgrave, 2003).
Professor Deborah Ashby
Professor Deborah Ashby holds the Chair in Medical Statistics and
Clinical Trials at Imperial College and is Co-Director of the Imperial
Clinical Trials Unit. Her research interests are in clinical trials,
risk-benefit decision making for medicines, and the utility of Bayesian
approaches in these areas. She is a member of the UK Commission on
Human Medicines, is a European expert for the European Medicines
Evaluation Agency and is Advisor to the National Institute for Health
Research on Capacity Building for Statistics, Clinical Trials and
Economics. She has served on the Council, as Senior Honorary Officer
and as Vice-President of the Royal Statistical Society, and on the
Board of Directors and as Executive Secretary of the International
Society of Bayesian Analysis. She has also served as statistical editor
for the Cochrane Cystic Fibrosis and Genetics Disorders Group and the British Medical Journal,
and on editorial boards of several statistical journals. She is a
Chartered Statistician, an Honorary Member of both the Faculty of
Public Health Medicine and the Royal College of Radiologists and was
awarded the OBE for services to medicine in the 2009 New Years Honours
List.
Professor Sheila M Bird is senior statistician at Medical Research Council's Biostatistics Unit and visiting professor at the University of Strathvclyde's Department of Mathematics and Statistics.
Professor Bird has been a Medicines Commisioner, was on NICE's Appraisal Committee, and has served on three Royal Statistical Society's Working Parties (Counting with Confidence, Statistics and Statisticians in Drug Regulation, and Statistical Issues in First-in-Man Studies) as well as on various Medical Research Council, UK and EU Working Parties/Groups. She chaired the Royal Statistical Society's Working Party on Performance Monitoring in the Public Services, and was inaugural chair for the Surveys, Design and Statistics Subcommittee of the Home Office's Scientific Advisory Committee. Its report on 21st Century Drugs and Statistical Science was issued in December 2008.
Sheila's research interests include transmissible disease epidemiology (from autopsy surveillance for subclinical vCJD to swine-flu and the modelling of late liver sequelae from injection-related Hepatitis C); drug-related deaths; and the application of statistical methods, including cost-effectiveness, to the criminal justice system's treatment of drug-dependent offenders.
David Coggon is Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the MRC Epidemiology Resource Centre, University of Southampton, and an accredited occupational physician. His main research interest is the epidemiology of occupational and environmental hazards to health. He has published some 200 peer-reviewed papers, as well as editorials, commentaries and two textbooks. In addition to his research, he has a major interest in the application of science in the assessment and management of risk. He has served on various national and international advisory committees, including the Committee on Toxicity (which he currently chairs), Advisory Committee on Pesticides (which he chaired for six years), the Plant Protection Products Panel of the European Food Safety Authority, the Depleted Uranium Oversight Board (as chairman), the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council, the Expert Panel on Air Quality Standards, the Advisory Group on Non-Ionising Radiation, the Stewart Committee on mobile phones and health, and IARC monograph committees on the carcinogenicity of industrial chemicals. He is currently President of the Faculty of Occupational Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians.
Professor Christl Donnelly
Having worked on a variety of diseases, her research is probably best described methodologically as synthesizing statistical and biomathematical methods for the analysis of epidemiological patterns of infectious diseases. This approach combines robust parameter estimation and hypothesis testing with the insights provided by dynamical models of disease transmission, host demography and interventions. Her research programme aims to improve our understanding of (and ability to predict) the effect of different interventions on infectious agent transmission dynamics and population structure - and thereby better inform the design of control strategies.
Professor John Edmunds
John Edmunds' research interests concentrate on the design of cost-effective intervention programmes against infectious diseases, taking account of the direct and indirect (sometimes called herd-immunity) effects of such programmes. He has recently accepted a Chair in Modelling Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Before that he was the head of the Modelling and Economics Unit at the Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections in London. He has co-authored over 100 peer-review articles, and acted as an advisor on national and international committees on many occasions on topics ranging from HPV vaccination to pandemic influenza.
Professor Jonathan Wolff
Jonathan Wolff is Professor in Philosophy at the University College London. He is director of the Centre for Philosophy, Justice and Health at UCL. His current research is looking at the question of how abstract theories of distributive justice can be used to inform public decision-making. He is particularly interested in questions of the nature, measurement, and rectification of disadvantage. His recent publications include: Risk, Fear, Blame, Shame and the Regulation of Public Safety, Economics and Philosophy, 22, 409-427, (2006). Making the World Safe For Utilitarianism, in O'Hear,A. (ed.) Political Philosophy, Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual, Cambridge University Press (2006), Disadvantage (with Avner de-Shalit) Oxford University Press (2007), Disability Among Equals in Disability and Disadvantage, ed K. Brownlee and A. Cureton Oxford University Press 2009
