Charo, Robin Alta

A BIOETHICIST FROM the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Robin Alta Charo has written or collaborated on nearly 100 journal articles, book chapters, and government reports on a wide variety of topics ranging from environmental law to family planning regulations to abortion law and reproductive policy, playing an important part in the debate over medical genetics and cloning laws, as well as general science bioethical issues and dilemmas.

Robin Alta Charo was born in 1958 in Brooklyn, New York, and completed her Bachelor's in biology at Harvard—Radcliffe, graduating from Harvard University Law School in 1979 as Robin Anne Charo. She then studied for a law degree from Columbia University, and from 1982 until 1985, she served as associate director of the Legislative Drafting Research Fund of Columbia University, [Page 93]living in Brooklyn, New York. She then spent a year as a Fulbright Junior Lecturer in American Law at the University of Paris I, the Sorbonne, in France, from 1985 to 1986, returning to the United States in 1986 to take up an appointment as a legal analyst for the Biological Applications Program of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. She held this position until 1988, by which time she was also an American Association for the Advancement of Science diplomacy fellow for the Policy Development Division of the Office of Population at the U.S. Agency for International Development. In 1989 Charo was appointed to the School of Law at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and from July 1, 2002, on, she was the associate dean for research and faculty development at the School of Law at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

During Charo's time at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, she has been a visiting professor at a range of medical schools and law schools around the world including in Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Cuba, France, Germany, and New Zealand. In 2006, from January until December of that year, she was a visiting professor of law at the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Charo is now a member of the University of Wisconsin, Madison's Medical School's Department of Medical History and Bioethics, serves on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison's Masters in Biotechnology Studies program, and lectures in the Master's of Public Health program of the Department of Population Health Sciences. She also offers courses at the university on health law, bioethics and biotechnology law, food and drug laws, medical ethics and problems arising from them, reproductive rights, torts, and legislative drafting. A member of the university's Bioethics Advisory Committee, Charo is also a member of the university's Institutional Review Board.

Making a wide contribution to ethical problems facing medical researchers, Charo has always been cautious about new developments being applied to humans because of the possible medical complications that might arise. As a result, when she had to deal with the issue of cloning, she argued for more research into the possible risks that such advances might contribute to higher rates of birth defects, miscarriages, and other medical problems and complications. Her ideas have influenced a large number of books on bioethics, and Charo has written extensively on many subjects.

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