Personalised Medicine, Individual Choice and the Common Good

About

Britta van Beers is Associate Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. As a legal philosopher she explores the notions of personhood and corporality within the regulation of biomedical technologies such as assisted reproductive technologies markets in human body materials and biomedical tourism. In 2011 she received the Praemium Erasmianum Research Prize for her Ph.D. dissertation on the legal relationship between persons and their bodies in the era of medical biotechnology (2009). Recent publications include the co-edited volumes Humanity in International Law and Biolaw (Cambridge 2014) and Symbolic Legislation and Developments in Biolaw (2016). Sigrid Sterckx is a founding member of the Bioethics Institute Ghent. Her current research projects focus on ethical and legal aspects of: human tissue research and biobanking; patenting in biomedicine and genomics; organ transplantation; medical end-of-life practices; neuroethics; and global justice. She has published more than 150 articles book chapters and books on these issues including the co-authored book Exclusions from Patentability (Cambridge 2012) and the co-edited volume Continuous Sedation at the End of Life: Ethical Clinical and Legal Perspectives (Cambridge 2013). Sigrid also serves on various advisory committees including the Ethics Committee of the Universiteit Gent Hospital. Donna Dickenson is the author of one of the earliest books taking a balanced critical stance on personalised medicine Me Medicine vs. We Medicine: Reclaiming Biotechnology for the Common Good (2013). She is Emeritus Professor of Medical Ethics and Humanities at Birkbeck College University of London and Research Associate at the HeLEX Centre at the University of Oxford. Previously she taught at Imperial College School of Medicine London. For many years she served on the Ethics Committee of the UK Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. She has written or edited twenty-five books as well as over one hundred articles or chapters. In 2006 she became the first woman to win the international Spinoza Lens Award for her contribution to public debate on current ethical issues about the impact of biotechnology on our society.