Timothy Caulfield has been Research Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, since 1993. In 2001 he received a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy.  He is also a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health. Over the past several years, he has been involved in a variety of interdisciplinary research endeavours that have allowed him to publish over one hundred and fifty articles and book chapters. He is a Senior Health Scholar with the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, the Principal Investigator for Genome Canada project on the regulation of genomic technologies, the theme leader in the Stem Cell Network and the Advanced Foods and Materials Network (National Centres of Excellence) and has several projects funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Professor Caulfield is and has been involved with a number of national policy and research ethics committees, including Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, Genome Canada’s Science Advisory Committee and the Royal Society of Canada’s Expert Panel on the Future of Food Biotechnology (2001). He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Stem Cell Policy: The Next Generation

Few areas of research have created as much social controversy as stem cell research.  Most developed nations now have formal policies touching on the relevant ethics, with some countries banning a variety of research activities (e.g., Canada bans “therapeutic cloning”). Much of this law is a direct result of the concerns associated with the moral of the embryo.  Over the past few years, however, a variety of new issues have emerged.  The science is moving beyond the derivation of new embryonic stem cell lines and with this move comes a variety of challenges. This talk will highlight and critique a number of the most recent social controversies, including: the marketing of questionable stem cell therapies; the regulatory and social response to new methods for creating stem cells (e.g, “cybrids and iPS cells”); and the commercialization and patenting of stem cell technologies.