The Child Welfare League of America in Arlington, Va., is a coalition of hundreds of private and public member agencies and a leader in the national child welfare movement, beginning with efforts to abolish orphanages in the 1920s and ’30s. The organization also is a center for information about cultural and racial diversity, including efforts […]

The U.S. Children’s Bureau was a federal investigative agency created by Congress in 1912, as an outgrowth of national campaigns to reduce infant mortality and child labor and of baby-farming and black-market adoption scandals. It advocated standards in placement and state adoption laws, and it held the first conferences on child welfare. Today the organization […]

Naomi R. Cahn is a professor at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., where she has taught family law, trusts and estates. She is an expert on adoption law. She co-edited (with Joan Heifetz Hollinger) Families by Law: An Adoption Reader.

Dr. Edmund Pellegrino is a professor emeritus of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center. He served as director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics (1983-89) and the Center for Clinical Bioethics at the medical center (1991-96). He previously chaired of the President’s Council on Bioethics. The author of more than 500 publications, he is best-known for his […]

The Rev. Kevin T. FitzGerald is a research associate professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in the department of oncology. He is also a Jesuit priest with doctorates in molecular genetics and bioethics. His research efforts in science focused on the investigation of abnormal gene regulation in cancer and research on ethical issues in human genetics. […]

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture is a coalition of more than 100 national, regional, and local religious and secular organizations.

The Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition International (TASSC) has launched a campaign to designate June as Torture Awareness Month. TASSC’s campaign is being supported by a number of churches and faith groups. June 26 is the United Nations International Day in Support of Torture Victims and Survivors.

The President’s Council on Bioethics is a 17-member panel appointed by President Bush in 2001 to replace the former National Bioethics Advisory Council. The new council includes physicians, lawyers, political scientists, a philosopher and a scientist. It advises the president on a range of bioethics questions.

LeRoy Walters is Senior Professor of Christian Ethics and professor of philosophy at Georgetown University. He has taught at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics since its founding in 1971. Walters served as director of the institute from 1996-99 and has written, taught and lectured extensively on ethical issues in genetic research and gene therapy, stem cell […]