Exploring Law and the Biosciences

An Interview with Professor Greely

Abstract

Henry T. (Hank) Greely (BA ’74) specializes in the ethical, legal, and social implications of new biomedical technologies, particularly those related to genetics, assisted reproduction, neuroscience, or stem cell research. He chairs the California Advisory Committee on Human Stem Cell Research and the steering committee of the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics, and directs the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences and the Stanford Program in Neuroscience and Society. He serves as a member of the NAS Committee on Science, Technology, and Law; the NIGMS Advisory Council, the Institute of Medicine’s Neuroscience Forum, and the NIH Multi-Center Working Group on the BRAIN Initiative. In 2007 Professor Greely was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, receiving Stanford University’s Richard W. Lyman Award in 2013, and the Stanford Prize in Population Genetics and Society in 2017. He published The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction in 2016. His next book, CRISPR People: The Science and Ethics of Editing Humans, was published in February 2021.

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1985, Greely was a partner at Tuttle & Taylor, served as a staff assistant to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy and as special assistant to the general counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense. He served as a law clerk to Justice Potter Stewart of the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge John Minor Wisdom of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.