2/08/06--Professor Charles H. Baron will be a featured speaker at the First World Congress for Freedom of Scientific Research, an international convention of scientists and legal scholars, to be held in Rome on Feb. 16-18.

The Congress intends to promote a debate on the relationship between science and society, in particular between science and politics. Planning for the event began in response to a recently proposed United Nation resolution that would hinder the work of scientists involved in embryonic stem cell research. The congress will seek to raise awareness of the “obscurantist and repressive forces” around the world that have stood in the way of freedom of scientific research, according to the convention’s Web site.

Baron will speak on the legal methodologies scientists can adopt in order to maximize their freedom to perform research, drawing on various decisions in American legal history that have sought to reconcile the oftentimes competing interests of scientists and social groups. He joins an already distinguished line-up of speakers, including Nobel Laureate Zhores Alferov and Michael Gazzaniga, of the US President's Committee on Bioethics.