KIE Senior Research Scholar Madison Powers addressed the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues on the right to privacy and genetic information. The Commission, led by Amy Gutmann, Ph.D., Chair, and James W. Wagner, Ph.D., Vice Chair, held its ninth meeting on May 17, 2012, at Embassy Row Hotel in Washington, D.C. The meeting brought together ethicists, doctors, scientists, lawyers, and health policy experts to address certain topics such as the development of medical countermeasures for children and access to, and privacy of, human genome sequence data.

Dr. Powers participated in the afternoon sessions on the right to privacy and genetic information, opening the sessions with a presentation on the underlying values associated with privacy rights. Dr. Powers participated in the panel session on the use of technology to control the flow of genetic information and a joint panel session on genomics with Amy McGuire, J.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics and Associate Director of Research at the Baylor College of Medicine Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Greg Biggers, Council Member of the Genetic Alliance and Chief Executive Officer at Genomera, and Leonard D’Avolio, Ph.D., Associate Center Director for Biomedical Informatics at the Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiology Research and Information Center (MAVERIC) and Instructor at Harvard Medical School.

For more information on the May 17, 2012, meeting of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, see the meeting agenda and the webcast of the day’s proceedings.