USC School of Law Legal Times

On April 16, 2002, the USC School of Law hosted a visit by Professor Judith Daar of the Whittier Law School. Daar delivered the 2002 Johnson & Johnson Healthcare Lecture on “The Prospect of Human Cloning: Improving Nature or Dooming the Species?” Professor Daar is a leading expert on the ethical and legal implications of human cloning, having served as chair of the Reproductive Issues Subcommittee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association Bioethics Committee and as a member of the University of California Irvine Medical Center Medical Ethics Committee and the Harbor-UCLA Human Subjects Research Committee.

Responses to Professor Daar’s remarks were offered by a panel composed of Monsignor Thomas Duffy, of Murrell’s Inlet, S.C., and Dr. Robert Best, professor and director of the Division of Genetics at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. Approximately 250 people from across the Palmetto State attended the lecture, a record crowd. Those in attendance included students and faculty in the Schools of Law, Medicine, and Public Health; members of the Healthcare Section of the South Carolina Bar; representatives of the pharmaceutical industry; members of the healthcare community; representatives from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, distinguished members of the South Carolina Supreme Court, and the South Carolina General Assembly.

George Irving of Johnson & Johnson, Steve Williams of Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd and Judith Daar of Whittier Law School.

During Daar’s visit, the law school hosted a dinner at the Palmetto Club to welcome her, to thank the Advisory Board for supporting the lecture series, and to acknowledge the contributions Johnson & Johnson and its director of state government affairs, George Irving, have made to the law school. Following the lecture, Professor Daar attended a function with the Health Law Society and members of the local healthcare bar which was underwritten by Johnson & Johnson.