Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues
1425 New York Avenue, NW
Washington,
DC
Andorra
20005
valerie.bonham@hhs.gov
Biographical Sketch:
Valerie Bonham began serving as the Executive Director of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues on July 26, 2010. In her previous role as senior attorney in the NIH branch of the HHS General Counsel’s office, Val served as lead counsel for a variety of high priority NIH initiatives and was deeply involved in ensuring that federal scientific and biomedical programs were implemented and managed in a socially and ethically responsible manner. Her recent NIH assignments included counseling the agency on development of public access policies to ensure wide distribution of research results; expansion of clinicaltrials.gov to enable broad access to clinical trial information; creation of the NIH policy for Genome-Wide Association Studies and establishment of a comprehensive repository for clinical and genetic data; and the operations of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which advises the federal government on policies for dual use research and other security matters. Val brings deep experience and perspective with legal and policy issues that are relevant to our Commission’s work, including human subjects protection; privacy, confidentiality, and HIPAA; information and data quality; scientific misconduct; and public/private partnerships. Prior to her work at NIH, Val served as an associate in the health care practice at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, as well as in research positions for the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments and the National Advisory Board on Ethics in Reproduction. She has written widely on bioethical and healthcare issues, including the ethics of research in captive populations, issues of informed consent and research safety, drug review and approval processes, and conflict of interest matters. She holds an undergraduate degree in ethics and the history of public policy and law from Rice University, a law degree from the University of Virginia, and is the recipient of numerous NIH Director’s Awards, Special Act Awards, and NIH Merit Awards.