JEAN E.
McEWEN, J.D., Ph.D.
Program
Director, Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Research Program
National
Human Genome Research Institute
Bethesda,
Maryland
Dr.
McEwen received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, magna cum laude, in
1977 from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota; a Juris
Doctorate in 1982 from Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, Illinois;
and a Doctor of Philosophy in Social
Policy in 1996 from the Florence Heller Graduate School of Brandeis University
in Waltham, Massachusetts. She
practiced law with the Chicago law firm of Schiff Hardin and Waite from 1982 to
1984 and served as a law clerk to the Honorable William T. Hart of the United
States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois from 1986 to
1988.
In
1988, Dr. McEwen joined the faculty of Boston College Law School, where she
taught until 1999. Between 1986 and
1998, she also served as an adjunct or visiting lecturer at several
universities and law schools, including Brandeis University, Loyola University
of Chicago School of Law, and the New England School of Law. She was a research attorney for the Family Law
Advocacy Project of the Massachusetts Committee for Public Council Services in
Boston from 1989 to 1991, and worked with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center’s
Division of Social Sciences, Ethics and Law from 1991 to 1996.
Between
1991 and 1996, while at the Shriver Center, Dr. McEwen served as investigator
on several research grants from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Human Genome
Program . In 1999, she accepted a
position as a Special Expert at the National Institutes of Health. She is now a Program Director for the
Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Research Program at the National Human
Genome Research Institute.
Dr.
McEwen has spoken and written extensively on the ethical, legal, and social
implications of genetics, particularly in the areas of genetic privacy and
discrimination, DNA banking, and forensic uses of genetic information. She is a member of the bar of both Illinois
and Massachusetts, and has been actively involved in a number of legal and
bioethics organizations, including: the American Society of Law, Medicine, and
Ethics; the Law and Society Association; the American Society for Bioethics and
the Humanities; the American Public Health Association; and the Section on
Individual Rights and Responsibilities of the American Bar Association.