Henry I. Miller

Henry Miller
Born	(1947-07-01) July 1, 1947 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Occupation(s)	Doctor and Author

Henry I. Miller is an American medical researcher and columnist, formerly with the FDA, since 1994 the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank located on the university's campus in California. He is an Adjunct Fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Career

Miller was born on July 1, 1947 in South Philadelphia and raised there.

He was educated at M.I.T. (B.S. in Life Sciences) and the University of California, San Diego (M.Sc. and M.D.) and was a resident and Clinical Fellow in Medicine at Harvard's Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He performed research on gene organization and expression as a Research Fellow in the laboratory of Philip Leder M.D. at the National Institutes of Health.

Miller was a civil servant for fifteen years at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (1979–94). He was the medical reviewer for the first genetically engineered drugs to be evaluated by the FDA and was instrumental in the rapid licensing of genetically engineered human insulin and human growth hormone. From 1985 to 1989, he was a special assistant to the FDA commissioner and from 1989 to 1993, the founding director of the FDA's Office of Biotechnology.

Since coming to the Hoover Institution in 1994, Miller has authored books and articles in scholarly journals, newspapers and online. He has been an Adjunct Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He also has been a trustee of American Council on Science and Health and a Consulting Professor at Stanford University's Institute for International Studies (now the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies).

Letter to Columbia and Response

On April 16, 2015, Miller coordinated a letter from a group of physicians to Columbia University demanding that the College of Physicians and Surgeons remove Mehmet Oz as a professor of surgery. The letter claimed that Oz has "shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine... for personal financial gain." Oz denied the claims in a statement made on April 17, 2015, saying "I bring the public information that will help them on their path to be their best selves. We provide multiple points of view, including mine which is offered without conflict of interest. That doesn't sit well with certain agendas which distort the facts..." Columbia came to Oz's defense, saying “Columbia is committed to the principle of academic freedom and to upholding all faculty members’ freedom of expression for statements they make in public discussion,” However, the physicians' letter elicited widespread criticism of Oz, much of it vitriolic, from a variety of quarters, including John Oliver on TV, Michael Specter in the New Yorker, and Oz's faculty colleagues at Columbia. By May 2015, the viewership of Oz's TV program had decreased by more than 50 percent from the 2011-2012 season.

Selected publications

Monographs include "Policy Controversy in Biotechnology: An Insider's View"; To America's Health: A Model for Reform of the Food and Drug Administration; and The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution. which Barron's chose as one of the 25 Best Books of 2004.

He is a frequent contributor to the Forbes.com science and technology section. He writes frequently about public policy issues surrounding pharmaceutical development, genetic engineering and infectious diseases At least two of his Forbes columns have garnered more than half a million views. He is also a columnist for "Project Syndicate," which translates his articles into as many as 12 languages and submits them to its syndicate of more than 500 newspapers and other publications.

Miller said at a forum organized by the George C. Marshall Institute that environmental groups such as Greenpeace use the precautionary principle to oppose development of products that would improve agricultural productivity not because they are dangerous, but because those groups manifest a social vision that is “anti-business, anti-technology, and anti-American.”

Miller regularly appears on the nationally syndicated radio programs of John Batchelor and Lars Larson.

Awards

Miller was the first recipient of an award named for him for Excellence in Public Health Education, from the American Council on Science and Health, a group that opposes junk science, in 2008. Described as a "vocal proponent of the free market", he was selected in 2006 by the editors of "Nature Biotechnology" as one of the people who had made the "most significant contributions" to biotechnology during the previous decade. In June 2015, he was selected by Scientific American Worldview as one of the 100 "visionaries who continue to reshape biotechnology -- and the world."

Controversial positions

Importance of DDT

Miller has repeatedly argued for the re-introduction of DDT, a pesticide that has been banned in some countries but was essential to the elimination of numerous mosquito-borne diseases from various countries and could be used to reduce the huge toll of malaria today. [Henry I. Miller, “Re-Booting DDT.” Project Syndicate, May 5, 2010. Henry I. Miller, “Rachel Carson’s Deadly Fantasies.” Forbes, September 5, 2012.]

Hormesis

In 2011, after the Japanese tsunami and radiation leaks at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, Miller discussed the phenomenon of hormesis, suggesting that “those … who were exposed to low levels of radiation could have actually benefited from it.” However, lest that statement be over-interpreted, he adds, "One thing is certain: At any radiation dose greater than extremely low ones — perhaps only slightly higher than background – radiation causes cancer." [Henry I. Miller, “Can Tiny Amounts Of Poison Actually Be Good For You?” Forbes, December 21, 2011.] He made similar points in an article titled, “Can radiation be good for you?”[Henry I. Miller, “Can Radiation Be Good For You?” Project Syndicate, April 8, 2011.]