R. Alta Charo is Associate Professor of Law and Medical Ethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison where she is a member of the UW Medical School Program in Medical Ethics faculty and of the UW Law School faculty. She offers courses on health law, bioethics and biotechnology law, food and drug law, and medical ethics. Professor Charo has been a Fulbright Junior Lecturer in American Law at the Sorbonne in Paris as well as legal analyst for the Biological Applications Program of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. She has served as consultant to the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine and the NIH Office of Protection from Research Risks. She is the author of over 50 articles, book chapters and government reports on topics in her fields. She currently serves as policy editor for the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. Since 1996, she has been a member of President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission.