John Barton is a professor emeritus at the Stanford Law School, an FSI senior fellow by courtesy, and a CHP/PCOR associate. His research and publications focus on international scientific research and cooperation, the relationship between intellectual property and antitrust, and the transfer of technology -- particularly vaccine production technology -- to developing countries. Barton has recently published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association on the pharmaceutical development process, and is co-author of the product development priorities chapter in the forthcoming book Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries. He has participated extensively in discussions regarding drug access for developing nations. He is also interested in the marketing structure of the pharmaceutical industry and the impact of vaccine regulation on the structure of the international vaccine industry.

Co-Sponsored with the Department of History and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies

Richard Evans is a Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, with a particular research interest in the social and cultural history of Germany since the mid-nineteenth century. He has worked on movements of emancipation and liberation, on social inequality in the urban environment, and on the social history of death and disease. Most recently, Professor Evans has worked on crime and punishment, especially the death penalty in German history since the seventeenth century, where he has used archival evidence to bring a social and anthropological approach to bear on major theories of punishment and society. Additionally, Professor Evans holds an interest in historiography and the history of the discipline of history. He has been Editor of the Journal of Contemporary History since 1998 and is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society, and an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and Birkbeck College, London. His most recent publications include Telling Lies About Hitler: History, the Holocaust and the David Irving Trial (London, 2002), and The Coming of the Third Reich (London, 2003).

For the past five years, the Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII) of the National Academy of Science has reviewed and analyzed the health risks from exposure to low levels of radiation (X-rays and gamma rays.) This re-assessment followed a period of rich accumulation of biologic and epidemiologic data from 1990 on, the year of the last previous study (BEIR V.)

The scientific evidence showed that even low doses of radiation may pose a risk of cancer, and that there was no threshold below which exposure may be viewed as harmless. Lifetime excess risks were determined for 12 relatively common cancers. While the over-all risk of cancer at low radiation levels is small, the mortality in women is higher than in men, and infants are at greater risk than adults. The presentation will review the conclusions of the 700-page report.

Herbert L. Abrams, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Radiology at Stanford, was formerly Philip H. Cook Professor and Chairman of Radiology at Harvard, and has been a CISAC Member-in-Residence since 1985. He served as one of the two physicians on the BEIR VII committee, the other members, representing radiation biology, cancer biology, physics, epidemiology and genetics. The 1st edition of his three volume work, Abrams Angiography: Vascular and Interventional Radiology, was published in 1961, the fifth edition in 2005. He is the author or co-author of six other books on Congenital Heart Disease, Coronary Arteriography, Diagnostic Decision Making, Diagnostic Technology Assessment, and Presidential Disability and of over 200 refereed papers on cardiovascular disease, health policy, disabled leadership, human instability in the nuclear forces, and inadvertent nuclear war. A member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, he was also the founding Vice-President of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.