Director's colloquium July 27 focuses on Los Alamos' link to the human genome project

Contact: Steve Sandoval, (505) 665-9206 (99-107)

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LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 21, 1999 ­ How the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory became involved in the Human Genome Project is the subject of a Director's Colloquium by Dr. Robert Mullan Cook-Deegan, next Tuesday, July 27.

Cook-Deegan is director of the National Cancer Policy Board of the Institute of Medicine and Commission on Life Sciences at the National Academy of Sciences. The colloquium begins at 1:10 p.m., in Los Alamos' Physics Building Auditorium at Technical Area 3. The talk is open to the public.

Cook-Deegan's colloquium talk will focus on the origins of the genome project and its links to Los Alamos, and how the genome project became a part of efforts to augment the missions of DOE-owned national laboratories.

Cook-Deegan earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Harvard and his doctoral degree from the University of Colorado, where he completed his medical internship and residency.

He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and received the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation investigator award in health policy research. He also has been a principal investigator on tobacco control among children and youths for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Cancer Institute and a senior associate for Congress' Office of Technology Assessment.

Cook-Deegan is a member of the Working Group on Germ Line Gene Therapy of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, trustee and secretary of the Foundation for Genetic Medicine, and retiring chair of AAAS' Section X (Societal Impacts of Science and Engineering) among his long list of national advisory affiliations.

Cook-Deegan is currently seminar director and a tutor of the Stanford in Washington program, teaching undergraduate students in tutorials and seminars on health and biomedical research policy. He also is a senior research fellow of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University and an associate in the Department of Health Policy and Management, School of Hygiene and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

In 1994, Cook-Deegan authored, "The Gene Wars: Science, Politics and the Human Genome." He also has authored numerous articles on technology, biotechnology and medical ethics for medical and academic journals and periodicals.

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