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CORVALLIS - Mildred Cho, a leading Stanford University bioethics and genetics scholar, will give a free public lecture on Thursday, April 11, at Oregon State University as part of OSU's year-long lecture series on the human genome.

Cho, a senior research scholar at Stanford, will speak on "Gene Patents and Public Policy: Ethical Issues and Empirical Studies." Her talk begins at 4 p.m. in Memorial Union Room 206.

A leading scholar and author on issues relating to genetics, Cho is a member of the national advisory boards for both the Human Genome Research Institute and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Public Policy Directorate.

Cho has studied and published on a number of different issues, including genetic testing, gene therapy, and conflicts of interest in biomedical research. In her OSU lecture, she will address the critical role that gene patenting has played in the biotechnology industry and in contemporary medicine.

"She will discuss the ways genes are claimed as intellectual property and reflect on the arguments for and against such patents," said Robert A. Nye, the Horning Professor for the Humanities at OSU. "She also intends to review a number of studies that directly examine the effects gene patents and licenses have had on the practice of clinical genetics and biomedical research in general."

Cho has a bachelor's degree in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a Ph.D. in pharmacology from Stanford. She taught bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the Stanford faculty.

This is the final lecture of the OSU series that has explored the history, science and ethics of the discovery and understanding of the human genome. The series, "The Human Genome: Historical and Contemporary Issues in Science, Law and Medicine," has been sponsored by the Thomas Shart and Mary Jones Horning Endowment in the Humanities at OSU.