The following individuals currently serve on AHRP's Board of Directors:
David Cohen, Ph.D.
Karen Effrem, M.D.
Michael Goodyear, M.D., Ph.D
Meryl Nass, M.D.
John H. Noble, Jr., Ph.D.
Sally Rogow, Ed.D.
Vera Hassner Sharav, M.L.S.
Huguette Streuli, M.L.S.
Dr. Cohen is Professor of Social Work at the
College of Health and Urban Affairs of Florida International University
in Miami, Florida. He was Editor-in-Chief of Ethical Human Sciences
and Services. He has co-authored or edited 8 books and over 70 publications
on psychiatric drugs, medicalization critical psychiatry and law
and psychiatry. He has been an investigator in over 20 research
projects in three countries, and has presented his findings in departments
of psychiatry, schools of law, consumer conferences, before state
legislatures, and as a consultant in legal proceedings. Dr. Cohen
was awarded the 2003 Eliott Freidson Outstanding Publication Award
from the American Sociological Association for his article "Medications
as Social Phenomena."
Needed: Critical
Thinking about Psychiatric Medications (160K pdf file)
Keynote Address by David Cohen, Ph.D.
Fourth International Conference on Social Work in Health and Mental
Health
Quebec City, May 2004
Mental
Health Insurance Parity Is an Empty Notion
Commentary by David Cohen and Keith Hoeller
Los Angeles Times
July 08, 2002
Dr. Effrem's undergraduate degree is from Purdue University in pharmacy, her medical degree is from Johns Hopkins University and her pediatric training from the University of Minnesota. She has provided testimony for Congress, as well as in-depth analysis of numerous pieces of major federal education, health, and early childhood legislation for congressional staff, state legislatures, and many organizations. Besides AHRP, Dr. Effrem serves on the boards of three other national organizations. She has spoken at numerous state and national conferences. She has been interviewed by or quoted in the British Medical Journal, the Wall Street Journal, WorldNetDaily, NewsMax, newspapers, and radio and television stations across the country. Dr. Karen Effrem and her husband, Paul, have three children and live in the Minneapolis metro area.
Dr. Nass
is also an expert on anthrax and biological terrorism, and a US
authority on adverse reactions due to anthrax vaccine. Dr. Nass
has testified on anthrax before three congressional committees and
the National Academy of Sciences, and consults widely on bio-terrorism
issues. An additional interest focuses on the ways scientific research
becomes perverted for political and economic ends. Her weekly column
appears in www.RedFlagsWeekly.com
; her own web site is www.anthraxvaccine.org
Dr. Noble's
30-year career has straddled public administration in federal and
state governments and graduate-level university teaching experience
at Brandeis University, the State University of New York at Buffalo,
and the Catholic University of America. His teaching and research
specialties are policy research and analysis, program evaluation
and meta-analysis. Dr. Noble has consulted over the years with the
World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Justice, the federal
judiciary and federal, state, and local governments in connection
with health, mental health, and disability policies and programs
with emphasis on their work-incentive and disincentive effects.
Educator and author, Dr. Rogow's research has focused on language
development, literacy and currently, the prevention of emotional
abuse and neglect of children with disabilities. She is Director
of "The Person Within" project, an educational program
to prevent emotional abuse and neglect of children and young people
with disabilities. Dr. Rogow has written several books and
many articles in the field of special education. Her most recent
publications are based on her research on the treatment of children
with disabilities in Nazi Germany and abuse prevention. Her
web site is International Special Education:
http://www.internationalsped.com/
Vera Sharav, a professional law librarian turned public advocate for
human rights, is the founder and president of the Alliance for Human
Research Protection (AHRP) which serves as an information resource, a
public interest watchdog, and a catalyst for public debate whose goal is
to unlock the walls of secrecy in biomedical research and to bring
accountability to that endeavor.
She has earned the respect and admiration of a distinguished network of physicians and scientists including those who have agreed to serve on the Medico-Scientific Advisory Committee for a publicity campaign aimed at providing credible information to consumers about the undisclosed risks of widely and inappropriately prescribed psychotropic drugs whose hidden hazards pose severe, irreparable risks of harm.
Ms. Sharav has developed a database to track ethical violations in research and failure to disclose drug hazards. Her advocacy efforts include: suspension of EPA pesticide experiment (CHEERS) on children (2005); federal investigations on the use of children in foster care in experimental AIDS drug and vaccine trials (2004); suspension of smallpox vaccine on children (2002); suspension of "violence prediction" experiment exposing 6-11 year old NYC boys to fenfluramine (1998); organized testimonies by victims of unethical research before the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (1997). These testimonies led to a prize-winning series in the Boston Globe, "Doing Harm: Research on the Mentally Ill" (1998), the shut down of 29 clinical trials at the National Institute of Mental Health (1999), culminating in the prize-winning book by Robert Whitaker, Mad in America (2001).
Mrs. Sharav served on the Children’s Workgroup of the National Human Research Advisory Committee (2001-2002); she has testified before national policy advisory panels including: the Institute of Medicine (against prisoner experiments (2005); against human pesticide experiments (2002); FDA hearings on antidepressants and the risk of suicide (2004 and 2006), the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (1997), military ethics forums and academic forums, and consumer advocacy forums (2006). Among her recent publications: Screening for Mental Illness: The Merger of Eugenics and the Drug Industry, Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry (2005); Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research Harm Children With and Without Disabilities," Journal of Disability Policy Studies (2004); "The Impact of FDAMA on the recruitment of children for research," EHPP (2003); "Children in Clinical Research: A Conflict of Moral Values," American Journal of Bioethics (2003); The ethics of conducting psychosis-inducing experiments," Accountability in Research (1999).