Dr. Sheldon Krimsky is professor of Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning in the School of Arts & Sciences and Adjunct Professor in Public Health and Family Medicine in the School of Medicine at Tufts University. He received his bachelors and masters degrees in physics from Brooklyn College, CUNY and Purdue University respectively, and a masters and doctorate in philosophy at Boston University.
Professor Krimsky’s research has focused on the linkages between science/technology, ethics/values and public policy. He is the author of ten books: Genetic Alchemy: The Social History of the Recombinant DNA Controversy (MIT Press) 1982, Biotechnics and Society: The Rise of Industrial Genetics (Praeger) 1991, Hormonal Chaos:The Scientific and Social Origins of the Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), Science in the Private Interest: Has the lure of profits corrupted biomedical research? (Rowman & Littlefield Pub.) 2003. He is co-author of Environmental Hazards: Communicating Risks as a Social Process (Auburn House) 1988 and Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment: Science, Policy and Social Values (University of llinois), 1996, co-editor of a collection of papers titled Social Theories of Risk (Praeger) 1992, and Rights and Liberties in the Biotech Age: Why We Need a Genetic Bill of Rights (Rowman & Littlefield Pub.) 2005.Genetic Justice: DNA Databanking, Criminal Investigations and Civil Liberties, 2011 with Tania Simoncelli, published by Columbia University Press, 2011; Race and the Genetic Revolution with Kathleen Sloan, published by Columbia University Press, 2011. His forthcoming book edited with Jeremy Gruber to be published by Harvard University Press is titled Genetic Explanations: Sense and Nonsesene. Professor Krimsky has published over 180 essays and reviews that have appeared in many books and journals.
Professor Krimsky served on the National Institutes of Health’s Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee from 1978-1981. He was a consultant to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research and to the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. He participated on a special study panel for the American Civil Liberties Union that formulated a policy on civil liberties and scientific research. Professor Krimsky was chairperson of the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility for the American Association for the Advancement of Science for 1988-1992. Currently he serves on the Board of Directors for the Council for Responsible Genetics, as a Fellow of the Hastings Center on Bioethics and on Committee A of the American Association of University Professors.