Diana Zuckerman

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Diana M. Zuckerman (born 16 June 1950 [1] ) is an expert on national health policy, particularly in women's health. She is the President of the National Research Center (NRC) for Women & Families.

[edit] Life and work

Zuckerman obtained a Ph.D in psychology from Ohio State University in 1977. At Yale Medical School she was a post-doctoral fellow in epidemiology and public health from 1979 to 1980. She was on the faculty at Vassar College and Yale University, and directed a longitudinal study of college students as director of the Seven College Study at Harvard University, publishing books and articles on the impact of media on children, the impact of religion on the health of the elderly, and how women's life experiences influence their mental and physical health. She left academia in 1983 when she was selected as a Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science Congressional Science Fellowship program. [2]

From 1985 to 1993 she worked in the U.S. Congress in a House subcommittee where she was responsible for a dozen Congressional oversight investigations on health and social policy, including political manipulation of government grants to prevent child abuse, lack of safeguards for infertility treatments, financial conflicts of interest among NIH grant recipients, and the lack of safety studies on breast implants. Information from the hearings received widespread public health, government, and media attention, resulting in several policy and regulatory changes, including the FDA requiring implant manufacturers to submit safety studies for the first time.[2]

In 1993, Zuckerman joined the staff of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and began an investigation that resulted in the first Congressional hearings focused on the possible causes of Gulf War syndrome. In 1995 she was a senior policy advisor in the Clinton Administration. From 1996 she undertook leading roles in non-profit organizations, including, from 1999, presidency of the National Research Center (NRC) for Women & Families.[2] Since 2005, she has also been a Fellow of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics.

Her work focuses on improving the quality of medical products and healthcare in the United States. She has been highly critical of scientific and medical research paid for by companies, who then use this to promote their products, as well as the lack of media coverage on alternative critical findings. She has said:

You've heard of junk science — a term coined by corporations to describe research they don’t like — but the real danger to public health might be called "checkbook science": research intended not to expand knowledge or to benefit humanity, but instead to sell products.[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://authorities.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?AuthRecID=3305166&v1=1&HC=1&SEQ=20071211042258&PID=27945
  2. ^ a b c www.center4research.org staff listing. Accessed August 17, 2006
  3. ^ Zuckerman, Diana (2002)Hype in health reporting. Accessed August 16, 2006

[edit] External links