Lori Andrews
Encyclopedia
Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly called Illinois Tech or IIT, is a private Ph.D.-granting university located in Chicago, Illinois, with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, communications, industrial technology, information technology, design, and law...
Chicago-Kent College of Law
Chicago-Kent College of Law
Chicago–Kent College of Law, the law school affiliated with Illinois Institute of Technology, is nationally recognized for the scholarship and accomplishments of its faculty and student body. It is the second oldest law school in the state of Illinois. Many of the applications of technology in the...
; Director of IIT's Institute for Science, Law, and Technology; and in Spring 2002, she was a Visiting Professor at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. She received her B.A. summa cum laude
Latin honors
Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an academic degree was earned. This system is primarily used in the United States, Canada, and in many countries of continental Europe, though some institutions also use the English translation of these...
from Yale College
Yale College
Yale College was the official name of Yale University from 1718 to 1887. The name now refers to the undergraduate part of the university. Each undergraduate student is assigned to one of 12 residential colleges.-Residential colleges:...
and her J.D. from Yale Law School
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...
. Andrews is a Fellow of the Hastings Center
Hastings Center
The Hastings Center, founded in 1969, is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit bioethics research institute based in the United States. It is dedicated to the examination of essential questions in health care, biotechnology, and the environment...
.
Career
Andrews is an internationally-recognized expert on biotechnologiesBiotechnology
Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...
. Her path-breaking litigation about reproductive
Reproductive technology
Reproductive technology encompasses all current and anticipated uses of technology in human and animal reproduction, including assisted reproductive technology, contraception and others.-Assisted reproductive technology:...
and genetic technologies
Human genetic engineering
Human genetic engineering is the alteration of an individual's genotype with the aim of choosing the phenotype of a newborn or changing the existing phenotype of a child or adult....
and the disposition of frozen embryo
Embryo
An embryo is a multicellular diploid eukaryote in its earliest stage of development, from the time of first cell division until birth, hatching, or germination...
s caused the National Law Journal to list her as one of the "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America". She was listed as a "Newsmaker of the Year", in the American Bar Association Journals January 2008 issue. The ABA Journal described Andrews as "a lawyer with a literary bent who has the scientific chops to rival any CSI investigator" and "a genetics expert of international renown, whose influence in the legal ethics surrounding genetics doesn’t stop at the border."
Andrews has also been involved in setting policies for genetic technologies. She has been an adviser on genetic and reproductive technology to the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
, the World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
, the National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
, the Centers for Disease Control, the United States Department of Health and Human Services
United States Department of Health and Human Services
The United States Department of Health and Human Services is a Cabinet department of the United States government with the goal of protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is "Improving the health, safety, and well-being of America"...
, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and several foreign nations including the Emirate of Dubai and the French National Assembly
French National Assembly
The French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....
. She served as chair of the federal Working Group on the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Human Genome Project. She also served as a consultant to the science ministers of twelve countries on the issues of embryo stem cells, gene patents, and DNA bank
DNA bank
A DNA bank is a repository of DNA, usually used for research. The NIAS DNA Bank, for example, collects the DNA of agricultural organisms, such as rice and fish, for scientific research. Most DNA provided by DNA banks is used for studies to attempt to develop more productive or more environmentally...
ing. She has advised artists who want to use genetic engineering
Genetic engineering
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the direct human manipulation of an organism's genome using modern DNA technology. It involves the introduction of foreign DNA or synthetic genes into the organism of interest...
to become creators with a capital "C" and invent new living species. She is a contributor to a blog, dealing with topics of genetics and reproductive technologies.
Andrews is the author of fourteen books and more than one hundred scholarly articles, monographs, and book chapters on subjects including informed consent, medical genetics, and health policy. She coauthored the law school casebook Genetics: Ethics, Law and Policy (West Publishing, 3d edition, 2010) (with Mark Rothstein and Maxwell Mehlman). In June 2002, she was awarded the Health Law Teachers Award, given by the Health Law Teachers section of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics. In March 2005, she was named an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Legal Medicine.
In her nonfiction work The Clone Age, published in 2000, Andrews offers a highly critical account of the motives and methods of a new breed of biological scientists. She expresses concerns about the role of venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
in medical research and what she sees as technology racing ahead of legal and ethical ground rules.
Her book co-authored with sociologist Dorothy Nelkin, Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue in the Biotechnology Age (Crown Publishers) discusses the psychological, social and financial impacts of the commercialization of human tissue. Future Perfect: Confronting Decisions About Genetics (Columbia University Press) outlines the policy models that Andrews recommends for consideration as we enter an age of increasing knowledge of the human genome
Human genome
The human genome is the genome of Homo sapiens, which is stored on 23 chromosome pairs plus the small mitochondrial DNA. 22 of the 23 chromosomes are autosomal chromosome pairs, while the remaining pair is sex-determining...
.
Her forthcoming book I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy (Free Press) will be released in January 2012. In the book, she explains how individuals' rights are being violated and she proposes a Constitution for social networks and the Web.
Andrews is the author of three mystery novels featuring a female geneticist and military lawyer. The Silent Assassin (2007), the second novel in the Dr. Alexandra Blake series, revolves around enemy skulls brought back from the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
by American soldiers and now stored in a drawer at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. This story line was based on six actual existing Vietnamese trophy skulls that are, in fact, stored in a drawer in Washington. On June 22, 2007, Andrews published an Op-Ed in the New York Times in response to the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
visit of Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet. She urged President Bush to return the "trophy skulls."
In September 2008, Andrews released the third installment of her mystery series, Immunity. The book involves a geneticist and DEA agent who works feverishly to stop an epidemic in the Southwest United States.
A frequent guest on Nightline, 60 Minutes, CBS Morning News, Oprah, and various other programs, Andrews is often interviewed about bioethics. A documentary, "Frozen Angels," which describes her work, premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.
See also
- Armed Forces Institute of PathologyArmed Forces Institute of PathologyThe Armed Forces Institute of Pathology was a US government institution concerned with diagnostic consultation, education, and research in the medical specialty of pathology. It was founded in 1862 as the Army Medical Museum and was located in Washington, DC on the grounds of the Walter Reed Army...
- BioethicsBioethicsBioethics is the study of controversial ethics brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, and philosophy....
- BiopoliticsBiopoliticsThe term "biopolitics" or "biopolitical" can refer to several different yet often compatible concepts.-Definitions:# In the work of Michel Foucault, the style of government that regulates populations through "biopower" .# In the works of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, anti-capitalist insurrection...
- Eugenics Wars argument