2012 Bioscience Speaker Information
 John Abele |
John Abele ’59
Mr. Abele is a co-founder and director of Boston Scientific Corporation, a pioneer and leader in the field of less invasive medicine. He holds numerous patents and has published and lectured extensively on the technology of various medical devices and on the technical, social, economic, and political trends and issues affecting healthcare. Mr. Abele is also the owner of the Kingbridge Centre and Institute, a conference center in Ontario, Canada, that provides special services and research to businesses, academia and government. He was president of Medi-tech, Inc. from 1970 to 1983, and prior to that served in sales, technical and general management positions for Advanced Instruments, Inc. Mr. Abele is the Vice-Chairman of the Board of the F.I.R.S.T. (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Foundation.
His major interests are science literacy for children, education, and the process by which new technology is invented, developed, and introduced to society. He is also a member of numerous not-for-profit boards. The Abele family’s Argosy Foundation made the philanthropic investment that was used to launch the Center for Community Engagement here at Amherst College.
Tenley E. Albright, M.D.
 Tenley E. Albright |
Dr. Albright is the director of MIT Collaborative Initiatives which promotes a systems based approach to solving deep rooted societal issues by engaging experts from a broad range of disciplines both within and outside the scope of a problem.
She is a faculty member and lecturer in general surgery at Harvard Medical School, and is currently on the Board of Research!America and the Bloomberg Family Foundation, and is a consultant to, and formerly chairman of, the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, and also serves on the National Council of Advisors of the Center of the Study of the Presidency and Congress; formerly a director of West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc., State Street Bank and Trust Company, and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. She has also served as delegate to the World Health Assembly for four years and has been inducted into the Military Health System Honor Society. Dr. Albright is the recipient of the 2011 White House Fellows Valenti Award.
Dr. Albright graduated from Harvard Medical School after attending Radcliffe College and has received eight honorary degrees. Earlier, she was a Gold Medal Olympic Figure Skater.
George W. Carmany III ’62
 George W. Carmany III |
George Carmany was born in New York in 1940. He is a graduate of Amherst College, from which he holds its Distinguished Service Award, and served as an officer in the United States Navy. Mr. Carmany began his business career with Bankers Trust Company in its International Banking Department, working in New York, and for four years in Sydney, Australia as an executive director of its merchant banking subsidiary. In 1975 Mr. Carmany joined American Express Company, where he held senior positions at the corporate level and in its international banking division, including senior vice president, Corporate Strategic Planning, and senior executive vice president and chief administrative officer of American Express Bank. In 1990 Mr. Carmany joined American Express’ investment management and private banking subsidiary, The Boston Company, as senior executive vice president, treasurer and director, a position he held until the sale of the company to Mellon Financial Corporation in 1993. Mr. Carmany subsequently served as chairman of the Olympia and York Bondholders' Steering Committee, and formed G.W. Carmany and Company, an advisory business in financial services and life sciences.
Mr. Carmany is a director of the Macquarie Infrastructure Company, New York, NY; and is a senior advisor to Brown Brothers Harriman and Company; Essex Woodlands Health Ventures; EnGeneIC Ltd.; a biotechnology company in Sydney, Australia; and The Asia Link Group of Beijing, PRC. He retired as a director of Sun Life Financial, Toronto, Canada, in 2010, and served until 2005 as chairman and CEO of Helicon Therapeutics, a biotechnology company founded by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Roche Pharmaceuticals and OSI Pharmaceuticals.
Mr. Carmany is the past chairman of The New England Medical Center; a member of The President’s Circle of the National Academies; a trustee and member of the Executive Committee of Bentley University; vice president of the Alumni Council of Amherst College; and past chairman of the Board of Associates of The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He is married to the former Judith Jermain Lawrence, and they are the parents of two children, Bill, 37, of Los Angeles, CA, and Elizabeth, 35, of New York.
Carmany, together with Gerald R. Fink '62, are the founders and organizers of the Gerald R. Fink '62 Bioscience Symposium.
Gerald R. Fink ’62
 Gerald R. Fink |
Gerald R. Fink '62 is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute and the American Cancer Society Professor of Genetics at MIT. He was director of the Whitehead Institute from 1990 to 2001. His research focuses on the molecular biology of yeast and fungal infectious disease. He was the first to describe transformation in fungi—the stable uptake of DNA into the genome of yeast cells. He is past president of the Genetics Society of America. Among his many awards are the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Medal of the Genetics Society of America, Emil Christian Hansen Award (Denmark), the Yale Science and Engineering Award, the Yale Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, the 2001 George Beadle Award, and the 2010 Gruber Award in Genetics. Fink has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the American Philosophical Society. Fink has been the founder of two biotechnology companies, Myco Pharmaceuticals and Ironwood Pharmaceuticals.
Fink, together with George Carmany ’62, are the founders and organizers of the Gerald R. Fink ’62 Bioscience Symposium.
James (Jim) Alfred Guest ’62
 Jim Guest ’62 |
James Guest became president and chief executive officer of Consumers Union (CU) in February 2001 after a long career in public service and the consumer interest, including 21 years as chair of CU’s Board of Directors. Consumers Union is an expert, independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to work for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers. CU publishes Consumer Reports and ConsumerReports.org. The organization was founded in 1936 when advertising first flooded the mass media. Consumers lacked any reliable source of information they could depend on to help them distinguish hype from fact and good products from bad ones. Since then CU has filled that vacuum with a broad range of consumer information and a succession of presidents serving as passionate and outspoken consumer champions.
Mr. Guest continues that tradition, fighting on Capitol Hill and in the media for the consumer’s right to know about, and be protected from, unsafe and misleading products and services. Under his leadership, the organization is currently pursuing a high-profile campaign to improve the safety, quality, accessibility, and value of the health-care marketplace. This has included the successful launch of several new initiatives such as ConsumerReportsHealth.org and the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center, which serve to educate and empower consumers to make more informed health-care decisions and to help change the market.
As the CEO of one of the leading nonprofits in America, Mr. Guest has transformed the mission-driven organization into a multimedia publisher that engages regularly with its readers, including more than 8 million subscribers to CU’s products and services and 600,000 online activists. He oversees revenues of more than $200 million and a staff of more than 600 who work at CU’s 50 state-of-the-art labs in Yonkers, N.Y., 327-acre auto test facility in East Haddam, Conn., and three advocacy offices in Washington, Austin, and San Francisco. Mr. Guest also serves on the board of Consumers International, a global federation of 250 organizations from 115 countries.
Mr. Guest’s public service career has spanned more than three decades. After graduating from Harvard law school and completing a Woodrow Wilson fellowship in economics at MIT, he worked as legislative assistant to Senator Ted Kennedy. In the early 1970s, Mr. Guest moved to Vermont where he served as Banking and Insurance Commissioner, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Development and Community Affairs.
Over the last 20 years, he has headed several public policy and advocacy groups including Handgun Control Inc. and the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, as well as Planned Parenthood of Maryland. He was also the founding Executive Director of the American Pain Foundation, a national consumer information, education, and advocacy organization for pain prevention and management.
Mr. Guest credits his very first job for introducing him to one of his biggest influences in consumer advocacy. He worked as the paperboy for Dr. Colston Warne—the first Chair of CU’s Board of Directors and a leader in the consumer movement. Warne was a professor of Economics at Amherst College and Guest, who lived in Amherst and was the son of the Amherst College Alumni Secretary, was Warne's paper carrier.
Peter W. Reddien
 Peter W. Reddien |
Peter Reddien, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the department of biology at MIT and a member of the Whitehead Institute. He received his Ph.D. in 2002 from MIT, where he worked in the laboratory of Dr. H. Robert Horvitz on programmed cell death in C. elegans. His work now focuses on regeneration, using planarian flatworms as a model system. He began this work as a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado at the University of Utah Medical School. He performed the first RNA interference-based screen in planarians, helping to establish planarians as a new molecular genetic system. Planarians can regenerate any missing part of their body, and Reddien’s laboratory studies genes required for regeneration. This work has led to the discovery of stem cell regulatory genes and genes that promote regeneration.
Reddien is a recipient of a Distinguished Young Scholar Award from the W. M. Keck Foundation and is also the recipient of scholar awards from the Searle Foundation, the Smith Family Foundation, and the Rita Allen Foundation and a Cabot Career Development Professorship at MIT. Reddien is an Early Career Scientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Alfred (Fred) M. Sadler ’62
 Alfred M Sadler Jr. MD FACP |
I will address choices I made as a young professional which took me off my chosen career path as a surgeon and opened up new doors, new vistas and forged an entirely new career – one that I could not possibly have imagined. I continue to choose directions, which may seem strange to others and sometimes to myself but provide me with a fresh spark, creativity and a new way to be of service.
My principal job since November, is writing which I do primarily from my home; I still take care of patients several days per month at the Harden Urgent Care Center in Salinas, CA. where I served as medical director and staff physician for nearly twenty years.
Professional highlights include collaboration with my lawyer twin brother, Blair (Amherst ’62) while at the NIH (1967-1970), in the preparation of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act – the model law which was adopted in all fifty states by 1971 and allows the nationwide program of transplantation and organ sharing that we have today; starting one of the first Physician Assistant Programs at Yale in 1970 and co authoring two books about PA’s and their role in the US Health Care System; helping to launch the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 1973 – the largest foundation devoted to health care in the US; helping to revamp the Emergency Medical System in this country; completing and internship and residency in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital; practicing medicine for thirty years on the Central Coast of California in several different settings, and most recently embarking on writing the history of PA’s and nurse practitioners (now numbering 200, 000) with policy implications for our future health care.