The Council consists of four Required Members (including the Chair) three specialists in bioethics, and the fourth a member of the general community. There must also be between two and four Members-at-Large, who may be chosen from the community and individuals with relevant backgrounds in ethics, the natural or medical sciences, the caring professions, philosophy and the Public Service of Canada.

The Chair is appointed by the Bayer Foundation, an independent charitable body created under the Canada Corporations Act. All other members are appointed by the Chair.

Bayer Inc. may appoint up to three consultants whose participation is limited to providing input on technical, factual and contextual matters. The Council may also invite individuals to sit as ex officio members, consultants or observers.

Current Members of the Bayer International Bioethics Advisory Council:

Burleigh Trevor-Deutsch, B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D., LL.B., M.Phil. - Chair
Dr. Trevor-Deutsch is a lawyer and bioethicist from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His is the clinical ethics consultant, Ottawa General Hospital Intensive Care Unit, and Adjunct Professor of Ethics, Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Administration, University of Ottawa. Dr. Trevor-Deutsch serves as ethics advisor to the Industrial Biotechnology Association of Canada and was the former chair of the Ethics Committee of Riverside Hospital of Ottawa. He also was a founding member of the Canadian Bioethics Society. Additionally, Dr. Trevor-Deutsch serves as an ethics consultant to UNESCO, WHO, the World Bank, and the Government of Canada.

Zbigniew Szawarski, M.A. Ph.D. Dr. hab. - member
Professor Szawarski is an ethicist and philosopher specializing in philosophy of medicine and bioethics. He is one of the first philosophers in Central and Eastern Europe who in the mid- 70-ties begun research on modern applied ethics and bioethics. It was a natural result of one year stay in Oxford as a British Council scholar. For almost 10 years he was a lecturer at the Centre for Philosophy and Health Care Ethics, University of Wales, Swansea. He was president of the European Society for Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care. Currently he teaches philosophy and ethics at the University of Warsaw, Poland. He serves as a secretary of the Committee Ethics in Science at the Presidium of the Polish Academy of Science and sits in several bioethical committees in Poland, including a committee on ethics of stem cell research.

Sheila Davies, R.G.N., S.C.M., R.N.T., R.C.T., M.A. - Member
Ms Davies is a nurse practicing in the Orkney Isles, Scotland. As a community representative for the council, Ms Davies uses her MA in ethics to serve as a public advocate. She was the Senior Lecturer at the School of Nursing, Bell College of Technology, Scotland, and is currently External Lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University. She continues to develop and deliver courses relating to health care ethics. She was a founding member of the Scottish Nurses Ethics Interest Group. Formerly a midwife, Ms Davies is active in a broad spectrum of women's health issues.

Bernard M. Dickens, LL.B., LL.M., Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S.C. - Member
Professor Dickens is an ethicist and lawyer specializing in law and medicine. He is one of Canada’s leading authorities on medical jurisprudence and bioethics. Currently, Professor Dickens is the Dr. William M. Scholl Professor Emeritus of Health Law and Policy in the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Medicine, and The Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto. He was project director to the Ontario Law Reform Commission’s Project on Human Artificial Reproduction and Related Matters. He also has been a consultant to the World Health Organization on several issues ranging from organ transplantation to human subject research. Professor Dickens serves as legal articles editor of the journal Law, Medicine, and Ethics, and is active on the editorial boards of several journals including the American Journal of Law and Medicine. He was president of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics. He is vice-president of the World Association for Medical Law and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Adrian Ivinson, B.Sc., MSc, Ph.D. - Member
Dr. Ivinson is a human molecular geneticist from Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. A native of Scotland, Dr. Ivinson is currently Director of the Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Ivinson formerly has served as Editor of the journal Nature Medicine and Publisher for the Nature Publishing Group. He currently is also co-director of a Boston-based not-for-profit group interested in the impact of technology on society.

Bartha Maria Knoppers, O.C., B.A., M.A., LL.B., B.C.L., D.E.A., D.L.S., Ph.D. - Member
Dr. Knoppers is a law professor and ethicist from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She is a practicing lawyer and holds a current position as Canada Research Chair in Law, Medicine and Ethics, University of Montreal Faculty of Law. Dr. Knoppers is Chair of the International Ethics Committee of Human Genome Organization She was a member of the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO. Dr. Knoppers has been honored as a Officer of the Order of Canada, and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Sorbonne and the University of Waterloo.

Eric M. Meslin, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. - Member
Dr. Meslin is an ethicist and philosopher based in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A. His current positions are Director, Indiana University Center for Bioethics, Assistant Dean for Bioethics, Professor of Medicine and of Medical and Molecular Genetics, Indiana University School of Medicine, and Professor of Philosophy, in the School of Liberal Arts. Dr. Meslin was the former executive director of President Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission and the former director for bioethics research in the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) program at the National Human Genome Research Institute. .. He has authored more than 75 articles and book chapters, focusing mainly on clinical ethics, research ethics, and health policy. He, and sits on the Boards of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and the Canadian Stem Cell Network.

Paul Schotsmans, B.A., M.A., S.T.D., Ph.D. - Member
Dr. Schotsmans is an ethicist and theologian from Leuven, Belgium. Ordained as a catholic priest, Dr. Shotsmans holds positions at the Catholic University of Leuven including director, Centre for Biomedical Ethics, and president of the Department of Public Health at the School of Medicine. Dr. Schotsmans is the past president of the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics.

Paul Thompson, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. - Member
Dr. Thompson is a philosopher and biologist from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He currently holds the position of professor of Biology and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is widely published in the areas of evolutionary theory, theoretical biology, and ethics. He also has authored two books, one on ethics and one on biology. Dr Thompson is a past vice-president of the University of Toronto, and the past Principal and Dean of the University of Toronto at Scarborough. He was recently awarded the Queen Elisabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Education and Environmental Protection.

Past Members:

2002 - 2003

Ali Artaman, M.D., M.H.A.
Dr. Artaman is an international health and travel medicine consultant with experience in the field of health information management consultancy in the newly independent states. He is currently the director of the Caspian-Central Asia Foundation’Äîan organization he founded with the vision of promoting public health and community development in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Most recently, he initiated the establishment of the first Central Asian Public Health Association in Tajikistan. He also represents a number of academic and research organizations from the region in North America. They include: Avicenna International Foundation, Central Asian Medical Journal and Kazakhstan School of Public Health.

1997-2001

George Connell, O.C., B.A., Ph.D., D. Sc., LL.D., F.C.I.C., F.R.S.C.
George Connell served as an academic scientist and administrator for more than 30 years. He was a Professor of Biochemistry and then Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, where his research was concerned mainly with the structure and function of proteins, among them the proteins of human blood. He has served as President of two major Canadian Universities - University of Western Ontario and the University of Toronto. Recently, he served as Principal Advisor to the Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada (the Krever Inquiry) and Chair of the Protein Engineering National Centres of Excellence. Dr. Connell is an Officer of the Order of Canada.

The Honourable Fred Kaufman, C.M., Q.C., B.Sc., B.A., B.C.L., M.B.A., B.C.L.
Fred Kaufman holds degrees in science, arts, law and business administration. He served as a judge of the Quebec Court of Appeal from 1973 to 1991, and currently heads the Commission of Inquiry into the wrongful conviction of Guy Paul Morin. He has taught courses in criminal law, medical jurisprudence, and business ethics at McGill University, and has been active in the field of commercial mediation and arbitration. In 1992 he was awarded the Order of Canada for his contributions to law and the community.

Dorothy Pringle, B.Sc.N., M.S., Ph.D.
Dorothy Pringle is currently Dean of the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto. Her clinical and research interests are in the care of disabled and impaired older people in the community and in the role of family caregivers. Previously she was Research Director for the Victorian Order of Nurses of Canada, and is well known as a speaker and author of articles on topics related to the health care system.

Mary Vachon, B.S., M.A., Ph.D., R.N.
Mary Vachon is a nurse, clinical sociologist, psychotherapist, educator and researcher who is currently a Consultant in Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care at Toronto-Sunnybrook Regional Cancer Centre. She is also an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioural Science at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include the experience of widowhood, adapting to breast cancer, occupational stress and end-of-life decision-making. She is also the author of numerous book chapters and articles, and has lectured to hundreds of groups around the world. Dr. Vachon is a cancer survivor and a leading thinker in the field of patient-family advocacy.