Sheldon Krimsky

Sheldon Krimsky is professor of Urban & Environmental Policy 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 six books: Genetic Alchemy: The Social History of the Recombinant DNA Controversy (MIT Press) and Biotechnics and Society: The Rise of Industrial Genetics (Praeger). He is co-author of Environmental Hazards: Communicating Risks as a Social Process (Auburn House), and Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment: Science, Policy and Social Values (Univ. Illinois), and co-editor of a collection of papers titled Social Theories of Risk (Praeger). Professor Krimsky has published over 100 essays and reviews that have appeared in many books and journals. His current book is about endocrine disrupters and is titled Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and Social Origins of the Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999).

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 and as a Fellow of the Hastings Center on Bioethics.

Professor Krimsky has been elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for "seminal scholarship exploring the normative dimensions and moral implications of science in its social context."