Ross McKinney, Jr., MD
Director, Clinical and Translational Research Ethics, Law & Policy
Professor of Pediatrics
Professor of Virology in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Director, Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities, and Medical History

Dr. Ross McKinney's clinical research is in the antiretroviral treatment of HIV infected children. In addition, he has published articles on the natural history and pathogenesis of pediatric HIV disease.

Dr. McKinney has chaired several Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group Protocols, including PACTG 300 (a 600 patient study of zidovudine, didanosine, and lamivudine in HIV infected children), PACTG 390 (a study of long-term outcomes related to therapeutic strategies), and PACTG 1021 (a phase I-II study of the combination of once daily FTC, DDI, and Efavirenz). He has been Chair of the Primary Therapy Research Committee, and served a term as member of the Excecutive Committee for the PACTG. Dr. McKinney also cochaired PACTG 247, a study of nutritional supplementation in HIV exposed and infected infants, which is completing follow-up.

Dr. McKinney is also experienced in the general design of clinical trials of new pharmacologic agents in children. He established the Pediatric Clinical Research Program at Duke, and was PI of an NIH-funded Pediatric Pharmacology Research Unit (in which he still participates). Currently, he serves as Director of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities, and
Medical History, and is engaged in research on improved informed consent documents and on conflict of interest problems in translational science.

Laura Beskow, MPH, PhD
Associate Director, Clinical and Translational Research Ethics, Law & Policy
Assistant Research Professor, Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy

Laura Beskow received her BS in nutrition from Iowa State University and her MPH with a concentration in health law from Boston University. From 1996-1999, she was Associate Director of the Stanford Program in Genomics, Ethics, and Society.

From 1999-2001, she was a career development awardee in the CDC Office of Genetics and Disease Prevention. There her focus was the protection of human participants in population-based genetic research, with a particular emphasis on informed consent. In 2005, Dr. Beskow completed her PhD in Health Policy and Administration, with a minor in Epidemiology, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For her dissertation research, she examined ethical and policy issues in research recruitment through cancer registries.

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Robert Cook-Deegan, MD
Clinical and Translational Research Ethics, Law & Policy
Research Professor of Public Policy Studies
Professor in Medicine
Director, Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy's Center for Genome Ethics, Law & Policy

Robert Cook-Deegan has been the Director of the IGSP's Center for Genome Ethics, Law & Policy since July, 2002.

Prior to coming to Duke, Dr. Cook-Deegan was director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellowship program at the Institute of Medicine (IOM), National Academy of Sciences. He was a Cecil and Ida Green Fellow at the University of Texas, Dallas, following his work in the report Allocating Federal Funds for Science and Technology (the "Press Report"). From 1991 through 1994, he directed IOM’s Division of Biobehavioral Sciences and Mental Disorders (since renamed Neuroscience and Behavioral Health). He worked for the National Center for Human Genome Research 1989–1990, after serving as Acting Executive Director of the Biomedical Ethics Advisory Committee of the U.S. Congress 1988–1989.

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Lauren Dame, JD, MPH
Clinical and Translational Research Ethics, Law & Policy
Research Professor of Public Policy Studies
Associate Director, Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy's Center for Genome Ethics, Law & Policy

Lauren Dame is the Associate Director of the IGSP's Center for Genome Ethics, Law & Policy, and teaches courses on Bioethics and Genetics & the Law at Duke Law School.

Ms. Dame's areas of interest include bioethics, genetics, biomedical research and the protection of human subjects, healthcare policy, and the effects of technology on privacy. She is a Faculty Associate of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and History of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center. From September 2002 to December 2003, she was the Chair of North Carolina’s State Task Force on Genetics and Public Health, and was a member of the expert advisory panel for Duke's online ethics training modules for genetics researchers—Accessible Genetics Research Ethics Education (AGREE). Ms. Dame received her A.B. in Human Biology from Stanford University, her J.D. from Harvard Law School, and her M.P.H. from Harvard School of Public Health. She has served as a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and as the Staff Attorney for Public Citizen’s Health Research Group in Washington, D.C.

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Susanne Haga, PhD
Clinical and Translational Research Ethics, Law & Policy
Assistant Research Professor and Scholar
Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy

Susanne B. Haga is an Assistant Research Professor and Scholar at the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy at Duke University.

Dr. Haga received a Ph.D. in Human Genetics from the University of Maryland. Previously, she served as senior staff to a federal advisory committee on genetic testing at the US National Institutes of Health and as a Project Director of Human Genetics at the Venter Institute, a non-profit genomics research and policy center. Her research interests focus on policy issues related to the translation of genomic medicine, particularly in the area of pharmacogenetics. She has published several papers on these topics as well as on the legal/regulatory, ethical, educational and social implications of genomic research and applications. She is the past Chair of the Information and Education Committee of the American Society of Human Genetics.

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Angela Roddey Holder, LLM
Clinical and Translational Research Ethics, Law & Policy
Professor of the Practice of Medical Ethics

Angela Roddey Holder is Professor of the Practice of Medical Ethics at the Center for the Study of Medical Ethics and Humanities at Duke University Medical Center.

Ms. Holder received a B.A. from Sophie Newcomb College of Tulane University and her J.D. degree from Tulane Law School. She received her LL.M. from Yale Law School, where she then became Executive Director of the Commonwealth Program in Law, Science, and Medicine. Thereafter, she was Counsel for Medicolegal Affairs at Yale Medical School and Yale-New Haven Hospital until 1989. She then became Clinical Professor of Pediatrics (Law) at Yale Medical School, Yale Law School and at Yale’s Institute for Social and Policy Studies. She came to Duke and the Center in 2001, where her research and teaching focus on the ethical and legal issues in human subjects research, in pediatrics and adolescent medicine, and in human reproduction.

Ms. Holder has published many articles on these and other topics and is the author of three books, all of which have appeared in multiple editions – The Meaning of the Constitution, a text for undergraduates written when she was teaching political science at the college level, Medical Malpractice Law, in its second edition, and Legal Issues in Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, also in its second edition. Currently Ms. Holder is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Pediatrics, the Board of Visitors of the National Cathedral School for Girls, and the Advisory Board of the Sarah Lawrence College Graduate Health Programs. She has served as President of the American Society of Law and Medicine. She was a member of three committees of the Institute of Medicine – the Committee to Study the Effects of Malpractice Liability on the Delivery on the Delivery of Maternal and Child Health Care, 1987-1989; the Committee on the Care of Dying Children and Their Families, 2000-2002; and the Committee on Clinical Research Involving Children, 2002-2004. She was a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, a member of the Executive Committee of Planned Parenthood of Connecticut, and a consultant to the Alternative Reproductive Technologies Committee of the Connecticut Law Reform Commission.

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Philip M. Rosoff, MD
Clinical and Translational Research Ethics, Law & Policy
Director of Duke Hospital Clinical Ethics Program
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Assistant Professor of Medicine

Dr. Rosoff received his undergraduate degree in Biology and Psychology from New York University in 1974. From there he went to Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine from which he graduated in 1978, winning the Award in Pediatrics after having been elected to AOA in his junior year.

Dr. Rosoff did his residency in Pediatrics, followed by a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He received further training in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Harvard University. He was a faculty member in the Departments of Pediatrics, Medicine and Molecular Physiology at Tufts University School of Medicine from 1985 to 1995 at which time he moved to Duke. He has been a Stohlmann Scholar of the Leukemia Society of America, a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences and a Fellow of the Pew Science and Society Institute. For the past two years he has been the Director of Clinical Ethics at Duke University Hospital. His research interests include the ethics of clinical decision-making and the psychosocial problems of long-term survivors of childhood cancer.

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Kevin P. Weinfurt, PhD
Clinical and Translational Research Ethics, Law & Policy
Deputy Director, Center for Clinical and Genetic Economics, DCRI
Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke
Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke

Dr. Weinfurt, an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Duke University Medical Center, is the Deputy Director of the Center for Clinical and Genetic Economics at the Duke Clinical Research Institute. He is also an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, a Senior Fellow of the Duke Center for Aging, and a Faculty Associate of the Duke Center for the Study of Medical Humanities and Bioethics. Dr. Weinfurt received his undergraduate degree from Loyola University of Chicago and did his graduate work at Georgetown and Oxford University.

Dr. Weinfurt's main research interests are in the intersection of medical decision making and bioethics and in the assessment of patient-reported outcomes in clinical research. Currently, he is the principal investigator on an NCI-funded grant examining the meaning of high expectations of benefit among phase I oncology trial participants. Dr. Weinfurt has published several empirical studies on disclosing conflicts of interest as part of the NHLBI-funded COINS (Conflict of Interest Notification Study) grant, and is working on several other empirical studies on conflicts of interest. He is also the principal investigator on an NIH Roadmap project designed to create standardized, responsive measures of patient-reported outcomes for clinical trials. As part of this work, Dr. Weinfurt is directing the development of new measures of sleep/wake function and sexual functioning. In addition to his interests in medical decision making and bioethics, Dr. Weinfurt has expertise in both quantitative and qualitative data analysis and has written several articles and book chapters on statistical methods. In the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, he teaches Introduction to Psychology and special seminars related to judgment and decision making.

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Nikki Vangsnes
Clinical and Translational Research Ethics, Law & Policy
Associate Director of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and History of Medicine

Ms. Vangsnes is the Associate Director of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and History of Medicine at Duke University where she holds responsibility for program implementation and administration. She also develops and coordinates educational initiatives in clinical and research ethics and in the humanistic aspects of medicine.

Ms Vangsnes serves as the Project Director for the Policy Ethics and Law Core of the Southeast Regional Center of Excellence for Emerging Infections and Biodefense (SERCEB) based at Duke. In that capacity she initiated the development of an online educational module on dual-use issues in biological research. As a member of the DTMI Ethics Team, she currently is creating an inventory of research ethics education activities at Duke and assisting the Duke Center for Community Research (DCCR) in the production of online educational modules on community engagement in research. Ms. Vangsnes also serves as a collocative member on one of Duke’s IRBs.

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