Henry I. Miller is an American medical researcher and columnist, formerly with the FDA, and from 1994 until 2018 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. and the University of California, San Diego 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 . 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 joining the Hoover Institution in 1994, Miller 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. In 2017 it was reported that an article published on the Forbes website by Miller, under his own name, had been drafted by Monsanto. As reported by the New York Times, Monsanto asked Miller to write an article rebutting the findings of the International Agency for Research on Cancer that had classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans. He had indicated willingness “if I could start from a high-quality draft.” On discovering this, Forbes removed his blog from Forbes.com and ended their relationship with him.
Positions
Tobacco-related debates
In a 1994 APCO Associates public relations strategy memo to help Phillip Morris organize a global campaign to fight tobacco regulations, Henry Miller was referred to as "a key supporter" and as a potential recruit. In 2012, in the context of arguing for harm reduction strategies, Miller wrote that "nicotine... is not particularly bad for you in the amounts delivered by cigarettes or smokeless products. The vast majority of the health risks from tobacco come from the burning and inhalation of smoke. Quitting tobacco altogether remains the ideal outcome, but switching to lower-risk products would be a boon to the health of smokers."
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, 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.
Miller, Henry I. Germline Gene Therapy: Don't Let Good Intentions Spawn Bad Policy. Issues in Science & Technology, Spring 2016.
Articles and Op-Eds
Henry I. Miller, "Genetic Catastrophes: A Tale of Science, Medicine and Suffering" Forbes. Mar. 23, 2016.
John J. Cohrssen and Henry I. Miller, "The U.S. Is Botching the Zika Fight". Wall Street Journal., Mar. 13, 2016.
Henry I. Miller, "What Politicians Should Learn About Vaccination,". . National Review. Sep. 19, 2015.
Henry I. Miller and Drew L. Kershen. Forbes. JUL 29, 2015.
He is 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 regularly appears on the nationally syndicated radio programs of John Batchelor and Lars Larson.
Awards
Henry I. Miller award for Excellence in Public Health Education, from the American Council on Science and Health in 2008.
One of Scientific American's Worldview 100
Described as a "vocal proponent of the free market", he was shortlisted 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.
