Alta Charo

R. Alta Charo (AB biology, Harvard 1979; JD law, Columbia 1982) is the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin. Prior to her arrival at UW in 1989, she worked as a legislative drafter, as a legal analyst for the congressional Office of Technology Assessment and as a policy analyst for the U.S. Agency for International Development. She was a member of President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission, which wrote reports on topics such as research with biological materials and transnational research ethics. She also served as a senior policy analyst at the FDA under the Obama administration, focusing on drug safety and on governance of emerging technologies, such as genetically engineered foods and nanotechnology. Charo is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly known as the IOM), where she co-chaired the committee that drafted guidelines for embryonic stem cell research and the committee that issued the 2017 report on science, ethics and governance of human genome editing. She was also founding co-chair of the Academies' Regenerative Medicine Forum. Most recently, she was a member of the organizing committee for the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, held in Hong Kong in November 2018. She writes on topics including reproductive rights, research ethics, and biotechnology policy.

Declaration of interests

Dr Charo has given evidence before the US Congress on indirectly related topics. She has also published on this subject area.