Media Advisory

Teleconference for media representatives:
March 9, noon to 1 p.m. ET

(March 2, 2006) Roughly 70 judges from more than 10 states will participate in the first National Judges’ Medical School March 8-11, sponsored by the Advanced Science and Technology Adjudication (ASTA) Resource Center in Washington, D.C., and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. The Supreme Courts of Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina and the Maryland Court of Appeals are all co-sponsors.

The program topic, “Biogenetic and Environmental Triggers and Treatment of Cancer,” is aimed at helping participants become better judicial gatekeepers and adjudicators in cancer-related civil and criminal cases brought before the courts. The program also will further educate a group of ASTA “resource judges” from Maryland and Ohio to be judicial resources for judges in their respective jurisdictions.

Media representatives interested in participating in this teleconference should call (919) 962-2741 at noon March 9.

Through medical grand rounds case presentations, lectures, discussions, demonstrations and small group “adjudication clinics,” the National Judges’ Medical School (JMS) will feature the detection, diagnosis, treatment, evaluation and cancer-related evidence introduced in incidental civil and criminal actions. The program’s science curriculum will feature the topic’s interacting biological and clinical dimensions.

Participants in the teleconference include:

• Dr. Franklin M. Zweig, ASTAR president and JMS director;
• Dr. James P. Evans, JMS chief science adviser, professor of genetics and medicine at UNC’s School of Medicine, director of clinical cancer genetics at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and director of the Bryson Program in Human Genetics in the School of Medicine;
• Chief Judge Robert M. Bell of the Court of Appeals of Maryland and ASTA chairman; and
• Chief Judge Thomas J. Moyer of the Supreme Court of Ohio and ASTA Vice chairman.

School of Medicine contact: Les Lang, (919) 843-9687 or llang@med.unc.edu
UNC Lineberger contact: Dianne Shaw, (919) 966-7834 or dgs@med.unc.edu

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