A Project Advisory Committee (PAC) has been established to help steer this initiative. The PAC is broadly based and designed to ensure that a full range of stakeholders' interests - from academic and industrial experts to representatives of patient and animal welfare organisations - are represented in the design and implementation of the project.

Dr Ron James

Ron James is Managing Director of PPL Therapeutics. He was involved with the formation of PPL in 1986/87 at which time he was part of the Prudential's venture capital team. In 1989 the opportunity arose for him to move to PPL as its Managing Director, a job in which he says he has never worked so hard nor had so much fun. Since 1989, PPL has grown from a staff of 6 to over 200 and has sites in Scotland, US and New Zealand. PPL has raised over £25m from venture capital and corporate investors to support this growth, before achieving a full listing on the London Stock Exchange in June 1996, raising a further £35m on a £100m valuation. PPL later raised a further £20m through a Rights Issue. PPL is perhaps best known for its involvement with Dolly the sheep and later the cloning of pigs but its core business is the production of therapeutic proteins using transgenic animals. PPL is working with major pharmaceutical companies to bring these products to the market.

Gary Kass

Gary Kass is a natural scientist with 15 years experience, with public consultation and participation being key themes of his work for over 10 years. He has been an Adviser at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) for the past 6 years, and has specific responsibility for maintaining the 'watching brief' on developments in public dialogue given to POST in the March 2000 Science and Society report from the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee. He is also a member of advisory groups for the 'Project on Understanding Risk' (led by Professor Nick Pidgeon at the University of East Anglia), and the 'Science and Society' project (under the Royal Society of Arts 'Ethics in the Workplace' programme).

Professor David Morton

David B. Morton is Professor of Biomedical Science and Ethics, and the Director of the Biomedical Services Unit at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is a laboratory animal veterinarian, has a PhD in reproductive physiology, and has research interests in the welfare of animals, particularly the recognition and assessment of animal pain, distress and suffering. Inevitably this leads into the ethical and scientific debates surrounding the use of animals in research and other ways by society. He was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party on Xenotransplantation and an EU Committee on the same topic. He is a member of various scientific animal welfare organisations (FRAME, AWSELVA) and several human and animal ethics committees.

Guy H Neild (MD, FRCP, FRCPath)

Guy Neild has been Professor of Nephrology at University College London since 1991. After graduating from St Thomas' Hospital in 1971, he studied renal histopathology at the Institute of Pathology, Tübingen University, West Germany (1975) before returning to England and training in nephrology at Guy's Hospital with Professor Stewart Cameron. Research interests include platelets and endothelium in renal disease, and cyclosporin nephrotoxicity. In 1980 he collaborated on an experimental kidney xenograft model. In 1984 he was appointed Consultant Nephrologist and Senior Lecturer in Renal Medicine at the Institute of Urology & Nephrology. He runs the Renal Transplant programme at University College London Hospitals (Middlesex Hospital).

Professor Geoffrey Oldham CBE (Chair)

Geoffrey Oldham obtained his PhD in Geophysics from the University of Toronto. After working in oil industry, he took up a fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs, where, among other things, he became a student of the Chinese language. In 1966 he helped start the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, serving as Deputy Director until 1980 and Director from 1980 until 1992 when he returned to the Canadian International Development Research Centre and took up the post of Science Adviser to the President. He has been Chairman of the United Nations Advisory Committee on Science and Technology for Development and was the UK Delegate on the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development. He chaired the Commission's Working Groups on Gender and Science and Technology for Development, and on Information Technology and Development. He is currently co-chair of the Commission's Gender Advisory Board. He was a member of the WHO Advisory Committee on Health Research from 1995 until 1999.

Timothy F Statham OBE

Formerly a Policeman, Tim Statham served for 24 years as a Senior Executive and Regional Director within a main stream Political Party. Awarded the OBE in 1995 for service to two former Prime Ministers. He joined the National Kidney Federation in 1998 as Fund Raising Manager and was then appointed the General Manager in 1999.