Crimes of the 21st Century: Organ Trafficking, Global Health and
Security
Speakers
Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.
Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor;
Head of the Division of Bioethics at New York
University Langone Medical Center;
Founding Director of the Division of Medical Ethics in
the Department of Health at New York University
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Caplan is currently the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and head of
the Division of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City.
Dr. Caplan is also the founding Director of the Division of Medical Ethics in the Department of
Population Health at NYU. Prior to coming to NYU he was the Emmanuel and Robert Hart
Professor of Bioethics and the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of
Pennsylvania. Caplan also taught at the University of Minnesota, the University of Pittsburgh,
and Columbia University. He was the Associate Director of the Hastings Center from 19841987. Born in Boston, Caplan did his undergraduate work at Brandeis University, and did his
graduate work at Columbia University where he received a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy
of science in 1979. Caplan is the author or editor of twenty-five books and over 500 papers in
refereed journals of medicine, science, philosophy, bioethics and health policy. He writes a
regular column on bioethics for MSNBC.com. He is a frequent guest and commentator on
National Public Radio, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia
Inquirer and many other media outlets. He has served on a number of national and international
committees including as the Chair of the Advisory Committee to the United Nations on Human
Cloning, the Chair of the Advisory Committee to the Department of Health and Human
Services on Blood Safety and Availability and the special advisory panel to the National
Institutes of Mental Health on human experimentation on vulnerable subjects.
Debra Budiani-Saberi, Ph.D.
Executive Director and Founder
Coalition for Organ-Failure Solutions
Visiting Research Associate, Center for Bioethics
University of Pennsylvania
BIOGRAPHY
Debra Budiani-Saberi is a Medical Anthropologist, the Executive Director, and Founder of the
Coalition for Organ-Failure Solutions. Dr. Budiani-Saberi has conducted extensive research
related to organ trafficking beginning in 1999 as a part of her study on refugee health. Her work
has included an analysis of key stakeholders and actors involved in the organ trade including
victims, recipients, medical professionals, religious clerics, laboratories, and the state. She has
conducted extensive follow-up studies on health, economic, social and psychological
consequences and, with the COFS team, established COFS prevention and outreach
programs. She has provided consultation on organ trafficking to the World Health
Organization, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and has worked in
alliance with various medical and civil society organizations to combat the organ trade. She has
been an invited lecturer in numerous universities in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Asia,
has published in medical and social science journals and appeared on numerous radio and
television programs including the Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera (English and
Arabic), CBS, Bloomberg News, British Medical Journal News, Al-Ahram and China Public
Radio.
Jonathan Ratel, LLM
European Rule of Law (EULEX)
Head of Special Prosecution Office,
Kosovo – Serbia
BIOGRAPHY
Jonathan is presently stationed with the EU mission in Kosovo as special prosecutor and Head
of the Organized Crime Department in the Special Prosecutor's Office, Republic of Kosovo.
Jonathan acts as a consultant providing expert assistance on security and justice reforms, Courts
reform and prosecutions in conflict regions and fragile democracies and has worked as a
deployable civilian expert in the Middle East (Iraq, Kuwait and Jordan), central and eastern
Europe (Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro) and South Central Asia
(Afghanistan), including assignments with the Canadian International Development Agency,
UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, European Union, UK Department for International
Development and UK Stabilization Unit. Jonathan has particular expertise in complex
prosecutions as past Legal Advisor, with the United Nations, International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, as an International Prosecutor with the Special
Department for Organized Crime and Corruption, State Court for Bosnia Herzegovina and as
UK Justice Advisor in British Embassy in Baghdad and Basra, Iraq.
David Rothman, Ph.D.
Bernard Schoenberg Professor of Social Medicine
Professor, History
Director, Center for the Study of Society and Medicine;
Director, Center for Medicine as a Profession;
Columbia University
BIOGRAPHY
David Rothman is the Bernard Schoenberg Professor of Social Medicine, Professor of History,
and the Director of the Center on Medicine as a Profession at the College of Physicians and
Surgeons at Columbia University. An historian by training, he has written extensively about a
variety of issues in the social history of medicine. Educated at Columbia University (B.A. 1958)
and at Harvard (Ph.D. 1964), David Rothman’s books include: Beginnings Count: The
Technological Imperative in American Health Care (1997); Strangers at the Bedside: A History
of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision-making (1991); The Willowbrook
Wars (1984); and The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New
Republic (1971; new ed., 1990). He has most recently published The Pursuit of Perfection: The
Promise and Perils of Medical Enhancement, co-authored with Sheila Rothman. He has also
explored human rights and ethics in medicine, addressing abuses in the conduct of human
experimentation, how AIDS came to infect Romanian orphans, and how trafficking in organs
for transplantation became a global phenomenon. His current focus is on the place of
professionalism in medicine, with a particular interest in issues of physician-industry
relationships and conflict of interest.
Ashok Vaseashta, Ph.D.
Director of the Institute for Advanced Sciences Convergence &
Director of the International Clean Water Institute
Norwich University Applied Research Institutes
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Ashok K. Vaseashta serves as Director of the Institute for Advanced Sciences Convergence
and the International Clean Water Institute at Norwich University Applied Research Institutes.
Dr. Vaseashta serves in the Bureau of Arms Control Verification and Compliance, Office of
Verification and Transparency Technologies (AVC/VTT) of the U.S. Department of State. Dr.
Vaseashta previously served as a Foster Fellow to the Bureau of International Security and
Nonproliferation, working with the Office of Weapons of Mass Destruction and with the
Terrorism and Foreign Consequence Management Program. Dr. Vaseashta’s research interests
include counter-terrorism; advanced and nanomaterials for development of chemical-bio
sensors/detectors; water safety and security; environmental pollution monitoring, detecting and
remediation; and green nanotechnology. He is an active member of several national and
international professional organizations. He earned his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech, a Master’s
Degree in Materials Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor’s
degree in Physics from the University of Delhi.
Ana Lita, Ph.D.
Co-Founder and Executive Director of
Global Bioethics Initiative (GBI)
BIOGRAPHY
Ana Lita is the Executive Director and Co-founder of the Global Bioethics Initiative (GBI), an
international not-for-profit organization incorporated in the State of New York in 2011, and the
former director of the Appignani Bioethics Center. Dr. Lita sits on the Ethics Committee of the
International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering, the NGO HIV/AIDS
Committee as well as the Genetics Policy Institute. She was a visiting scholar at the University
of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics from September 2009 to June 2010. The author of
numerous conference presentations, in addition to scholarly and popular publications, Lita is an
active voice in public and academic discourse. Her teaching and writings have focused on
ethics, especially in health care, medicine, and business. She has received a Soros Foundation
Fellowship and a National Association Fellowship for International Scholars and was a visiting
researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy in 1995. She earned her B.A.
in history of western philosophy from the University of Bucharest, Romania and an M.A. in
sociology focused on political culture from the Central European University in Prague. She
received her Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University specializing in applied ethics and
social philosophy.