Alta Charo

R. Alta Charo (AB biology, Harvard 1979; JD law, Columbia 1982) is the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin. Prior to arriving at UW, she was a Fulbright scholar teaching American law at the Sorbonne, and worked as a legal analyst for the congressional Office of Technology Assessment and for the U.S. Agency for International Development. She was a member of President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and later, after serving on the 2008 transition team, she served as a senior policy analyst at the FDA under the Obama administration, focusing on drug safety and on governance of emerging technologies. Charo is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly known as the IOM), where served on committees issuing recommendations on topics ranging from prevention of bioterrorism to the safety of vaccines. She co-chaired the National Academy committee that drafted guidelines for embryonic stem cell research, co-founded its forum on regenerative medicine, and co-chaired the committee that issued the 2017 report on science, ethics and governance of human genome editing. Most recently she was a member of the organizing committee for the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong. Charo writes on topics including reproductive rights, research ethics, and biotechnology policy.



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