Debra Greenfield is an attorney and Adjunct Assistant Professor with the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics. She has worked on cutting edge cases involving law and biotechnology, and has authored amicus briefs for both the Federal Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court. Her work has been published in both legal and bioethics journals. She has served as a member of the ABA Subcommittee on Assisted Reproduction and Genetics, as well as the Los Angeles County Bar Association Bioethics Committee.
Ms. Greenfield currently teaches undergraduate courses concerning legal rights in the biotech age, and pursues research on current issues in law and biotechnology. She has published in both legal and bioethics journals including the Hastings Center Report, the Annals of Health Law (health law journal of Loyola University, Chicago), and the Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal, as well as the publication, GeneWatch. She has also authored Briefs for Amici Curiae, for cases in both the Federal Circuit and the United States Supreme Court.
Ms. Greenfield also advocates for women’s health, as a co-founding member of the Pro-Choice Alliance for Responsible Research, a group of progressive women’s health activists involved as active public commentators on the workings of the CA stem cell agency, and aided CA legislators in the passage of Senate Bill 1260, a law protecting egg providers for stem cell cloning research. Locally, Ms. Greenfield has been a member of the Bioethics Committee at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Still believing in the power of the media, however, she recently resumed her film career, working to produce a film based on the life of the Internet prodigy, Aaron Swartz for HBO films.
Publications:
Santa Clara Computer and High Tech. L.J. [Vol. 25 2009] 467-538 Intangible or Embodied Information: the Non-Statutory Nature of Human Genetic Material
Hastings Center Report, Volume 34 No. 5 September-October, 2004: What’s Wrong with the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act?
Loyola University Chicago, Annals of Health Law, Volume 15 issue 2: (spring/summer 2006) Greenberg v. Miami Children’s Hospital: Unjust Enrichment and the Patenting of Human Genetic Material
Bioethics Forum, Hastings Center, Monday August 20, 2007: Choosing Chance:
The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, by Michael Sandel
GeneWatch (magazine of the Counsel for Responsible Genetics) “Freedom of Genes” (Association for Molecular Pathology, v. USPTO: First Amendment Implications)(volume 12 Number 5-6 p. 36 Dec. 2010)
Briefs:
BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE PEOPLE’S MEDICAL SOCIETY IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER, in the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Labcorp, Petitioner v. Metabolite Laboratories, Inc., et al, Respondents. (Lori B. Andrews, Counsel of Record, Clements Ripley, Francis C. J. Pizzuli)
BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE THE NATIONAL WOMEN’S HEALTH NETWORK THE ASIAN COMMUNITIES FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE, THE CENTER FOR GENETICS AND SOCIETY, GENERATIONS AHEAD, THE PRO-CHOICE ALLIANCE FOR RESPONSIBLE RESEARCH AND ALLIANCE FOR HUMANE BIOTECHNOLOGY IN SUPPORT OF THE PLAINTIFFS-APPELLEE (Counsel of Record); (two briefs in the Federal Circuit Courts and two briefs for the U.S Supreme Court)