Background/Experience with the Program
Ms. Kearns MS, MA, is a senior researcher in the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. She is a member of the division’s working groups on Compassionate Use and Preapproval Access (CUPA) and Pediatric Gene Therapy and Medical Ethics (PGTME) and subgroup on Preapproval Access and Gene Therapy. She has published and spoken extensively on the ethical issues surrounding preapproval access to investigational drugs, including state and federal Right to Try legislation. More recently she has been studying and writing about the ethics of preapproval access to gene therapies and of individualized genetic interventions. She is the deputy chair of the Compassionate Use Advisory Committees (CompAC), independent, expert panels of bioethicists, clinicians, and patient representatives that advise Janssen Pharmaceuticals on the ethical allocation of its investigational drugs, and the associate director of the division’s High School Bioethics Project.
Disclosures
Ms. Kearns is the deputy chair of the Compassionate Use Advisory Committees (CompAC), independent panels of medical experts, bioethicists, and patient representatives formed by NYU School of Medicine in collaboration with Janssen Pharmaceuticals to advise Janssen on the ethical allocation of its investigational medicines. NYU receives administrative funding from Janssen to facilitate the CompAC program; part of Ms. Kearns’s salary is funded by this support.