Henry T. (hank) Greely

Biography

Henry T. "Hank" Greely is the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and Professor, by courtesy, of Genetics at Stanford University. He specializes in ethical, legal, and social issues arising from advances in the biosciences, particularly from genetics, neuroscience, and human 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. Professor Greely graduated from Stanford in 1974 and from Yale Law School in 1977. He served as a law clerk for Judge John Minor Wisdom on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for Justice Potter Stewart of the United States Supreme Court. He began teaching at Stanford in 1985.

Research Interest

His current interests in neuroscience involve the consequences of advances in neurosciences for 1) predicting future diseases or traits; 2) reading minds to allow detection of subjective mental states such as pain, recognition, bias, or memory; 3) "treating" non-disease traits; 4) cognitive enhancement; 5) detecting consciousness and handling issues around disorders of consciousness; and 6) issues of responsibility. His current interests in human genetics focus on 1) prenatal genetic diagnosis, 2) the effects of widespread adoption of clinical whole genome sequencing, and 3) ethical, legal, and social issues in genomic biobanks. In stem cell research, I am currently interested in 1) legal challenges to stem cell research and 2) issues around human/non-human chimeras. His interests in human research protections, biological enhancement, and the future of reproduction draw on, and involve, all three of the substantive fields described above.