Professor Graeme Laurie, Chair of Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh, has been appointed to the post of Chairman of the UK Biobank Ethics and Governance Council (EGC) with effect from 1 September 2006.

Professor Laurie is also co-director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law. His research interests include the role of law in promoting and regulating science, medicine and technology.

Notably, in 2001, Professor Laurie convened a World Health Organization working group that produced international guidelines on the establishment and maintenance of genetic databases.

He was a member of the Interim Advisory Group on Ethics and Governance for UK Biobank, which advised the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council on the development of the Ethics and Governance Framework.

Professor Laurie is also a member of the editorial boards of four medico-legal journals and co-series editor of the Cambridge University Press series on Medicine, Law and Ethics. His publications include the monograph 'Genetic Privacy: A challenge to medico-legal norms', published by Cambridge University Press in 2002.

See also

• Update: UK Biobank to go national (News, 22 August 2006)

External links

• UK Biobank website
• UK Biobank Ethics and Governance Council website