NEW YORK — Celia Fisher, Ph.D., director of the Fordham University Center for Ethics Education, has been confirmed as chair of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Human Studies Review Board.
Fisher, who is also Fordham University’s Marie Ward Doty Professor of Psychology, will lead the Human Studies Review Board in its role as advisor to the EPA. Primarily, the Board will look at the science and ethicality of research submitted to the EPA for the approval of new products.
Congress voted the EPA Human Studies Review Board into law in 2006 when it was discovered that humans had been exposed to pesticides for industry research. Based on the new law, the EPA is prohibited from using industry research that does not meet stringent ethical requirements. The new law bans all third-party intentional dosing research on pesticides involving children and pregnant women, and protects all adult volunteers.
“This is an extremely exciting opportunity to make a difference by applying ethical standards to protect Americans in the most practical and necessary arena,” says Fisher.
As one of the nation’s leading ethicists, Fisher is a member of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP); co-chair of the SACHRP Subcommittee on Research Involving Children; and founding editor of the journal Applied Developmental Science.
She also chaired the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Ethics Code Task Force (for which she received an APA Presidential Commendation); the New York State Board for Psychology; the Ethics Committee of the Society for Research in Child Development, and the National Task Force on Applied Developmental Science; and is past member of the Ethics Working Group of the National Children’s Study; the NIMH Data Safety and Monitoring Board; and the Institute of Medicine s Committee on Clinical Research Involving Children.
Fisher is author of Decoding the Ethics Code: A Practical Guide for Psychologists (Sage Publications), and more than 100 publications in the areas of ethics and life-span development, including commissioned papers for the President’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission on relational ethics and vulnerable populations and on the ethics of suicide research for NIMH. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
