Dr. James P. Evans

James P. Evans, M.D., Ph.D. is Editor-in-Chief of Genetics in Medicine and Professor of Genetics and Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also Director of UNC Clinical Cancer Genetics Services and of the UNC Bryson Program in Human Genetics.
 
Jim is interested in cancer genetics, pharmacogenomics, and the broad issue of the use of genetic information. He is an advisor to the US Secretary of Health and Human Services on the subject of “Genetics, Health, and Society”. He has been actively involved nationally and internationally in education of high courts about genetic and scientific matters. In 2004 he was a principle organizer and faculty member for a United Nations conference in Chile which was attended by over 80 nations and addressed scientific disparities throughout the world.
 
Jim is:

• Conversant on medical and cancer genetics, disease causation and genetics, medical decision making, and biotechnology.
• Directs the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences’ Clinical Cancer Genetics Services, which evaluates and counsels patients who are perceived to be at high risk for cancer by virtue of their family history.
• Directs the new UNC Bryson Program in Human Genetics, which seeks to integrate basic science investigation with clinical care.
• Involved in the campus-wide “Phenotyping Core” which serves to collect DNA samples and clinical information from a broad array of investigators in order to gain maximal amounts of information from genetic studies and facilitate such studies.
• Organizer and participant in recent United Nations conference in Concepcin, Chile that addressed transnational discrepancies in the development and application of biotechnology.
• Senior scientific advisor to the Einstein Institute for Science, Health, and the Courts, an organization that has been instrumental in educating high court judges in matters of genetics and biotechnology.

Jim authored The complexities of predictive genetic testing, Physical mapping of the split hand/split foot locus on chromosome 7 and implication in syndromic ectrodactyly, A germline substitution in the human MSH2 gene is associated with high-grade dysplasia and cancer in ulcerative colitis, The new genetics and its consequences for family, kinship, medicine and medical genetics, Racial Differences in Enrollment in a Cancer Genetics Registry, Asp187Asn mutation of gelsolin in an American kindred with familial amyloidosis, Finnish type (FAP IV), and Canine hemophilia B resulting from a point mutation with unusual consequences.
 
Jim earned his Ph.D. in Pathology and Oncology in 1983 and his M.D. in 1984, both from the University of Kansas Medical Center Graduate School. He served as resident and chief resident of Internal Medicine at The University of North Carolina. He trained in medical genetics at The University of Washington in Seattle before moving back to Chapel Hill. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Medical Genetics, and in Molecular Diagnostics.
 
Read Biologist Teaches the Nation’s Judges About Genetics.