Linda Birnbaum

This event took place on Thursday, May 3, 2012
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Linda S. Birnbaum is Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and National Toxicology Program Division. As NIEHS and NTP director, Dr. Birnbaum oversees a budget that funds multidisciplinary biomedical research programs, prevention, and intervention efforts that encompass training, education, technology transfer, and community outreach. The NIEHS supports more than 1,000 research grants.

Dr. Birnbaum has received numerous awards, including the Women in Toxicology Elsevier Mentoring Award, the Society of Toxicology Public Communications Award, EPA’s Health Science Achievement Award and Diversity Leadership Award, and 12 Science and Technology Achievement Awards. She is the author of several hundred peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, abstracts, and reports. Dr. Birnbaum received her M.S. and Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Illinois, Urbana. A board certified toxicologist, Dr. Birnbaum has served as a federal scientist for 30 years - 19 years with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development, and the first ten years at NIEHS as a senior staff fellow at the National Toxicology Program, then as a principal investigator and research microbiologist, and finally as a group leader for the Institute’s Chemical Disposition Group.

Thomas A. Burke: Science under Siege: Balancing Science and Politics in Managing Chemical Risks

This event took place on Tuesday, March 27th, 2012 from 3:00-4:00 p.m.

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Thomas A. Burke, Ph.D., MPH
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Managing chemical risks during hard economic times requires difficult decisions. Risk assessment is the dominant policy tool for managing chemical risks, providing a synthesis of the available science to inform decision making. In today’s anti-regulatory climate the science of regulatory risk assessments is under unprecedented scrutiny. The debates are heightened by reports from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) that call for improving the EPA risk assessment process. This presentation will present an overview of the NAS report Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment, which examines some of the greatest challenges to effective assessment, management and communication of environmental risks. This report, known as “The Silver Book” provides a strategy for improving the integration of science into regulatory decision making from problem formulation through risk management.

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Thomas A. Burke is Associate Dean for Public Health Practice and Training and Professor in The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management, with joint appointments in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and the School of Medicine Department of Oncology. He is also Director of the Johns Hopkins Risk Sciences and Public Policy Institute. Dr. Burke is Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Improving Risk Analysis and in 2006 he was named a Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis. His research interests include environmental epidemiology and surveillance, evaluation of population exposures to environmental pollutants, assessment and communication of environmental risks, and application of epidemiology and health risk assessment to public policy. He was Principal Investigator for the Pew Environmental Health Commission which established the framework for a national approach to environmental public health tracking. He has been awarded the Johns Hopkins Golden Apple Award for excellence in teaching four times.

Before joining the University faculty, Dr. Burke was Deputy Commissioner of Health for the State of New Jersey and Director of Science and Research for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. In New Jersey, he directed initiatives that influenced the development of national programs, such as Superfund, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Toxics Release Inventory.

Dr. Burke has served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology and chaired the NAS Committee on Human Biomonitoring for Environmental Toxicants and Committee on Toxicants and Pathogens in Biosolids Applied to Land. He also served on the NAS Committee on the Toxicological Effects of Methylmercury. In 2003 he was named a lifetime National Associate of the National Academies. He was Inaugural Chair of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the CDC National Center for Environmental Health and a member of the Executive Committee of the EPA Board of Scientific Counselors.

Dr. Burke received his BS from St. Peter's College, his MPH from the University of Texas and his PhD in epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania.

The Changing Domestic and International Landscape for Agricultural Biotechnology and Biosafety

Gregory Jaffe, J.D.
Director, Project on Biotechnology, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Washington, DC
Thursday, April 26th from 2:00-3:00 p.m.
Humphrey School, Room 180

Although genetically engineered crops have been grown in the US and around the world for fifteen years, they still remain controversial. New, and sometimes more controversial, products are being developed and marketed, In the US, this has led to recent regulatory decisions by the Obama Administration that will impact farmers, consumers, and the future direction of this technology. Internationally, countries continue to implement the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol and the more recent Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress, providing opportunities for proponents and opponents to influence adoption of genetically engineered crops in almost every country around the world. This talk will describe and analyze these recent product and regulatory developments and predict what can be expected in the coming months both domestically and internationally.
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Gregory Jaffe is the Director of the Project on Biotechnology for the Center for Science in the Public Interest (“CSPI”), a non-profit consumer organization located in the United States. Mr. Jaffe came to CSPI after a long and distinguished career in government service as a Trial Attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division and as Senior Counsel with the U.S. EPA, Air Enforcement Division. He is a recognized international expert on agricultural biotechnology and biosafety and has published numerous articles and reports on those topics. He was worked on biosafety regulatory issues in the United States and throughout the world, including the African countries of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mali, Ghana, Malawi, South Africa, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria. He was a member of the Secretary of Agriculture’s Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture from 2003-2008 and was recently reappointed for a new term starting in 2011. He was also a member of FDA’s Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee from 2004-2008. Gregory Jaffe earned his BA with High Honors from Wesleyan University in Biology and Government and then received a law degree from Harvard Law School.