Meet Our Team: Dr. Marsha Michie
Dr. Michie’s interests and career can be thought of as a vibrant, steadily-growing tree. Her roots are in anthropology, or the study of how human society and culture developed. These roots formed at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill, where Dr. Michie received her PhD in Anthropology. Closely related to her work in anthropology are two other roots on her tree: her experience in ethnography, the scientific description of people and culture, and her experience in qualitative research, or the collection and analysis of experiences and behavior. Dr. Michie first started research interviewing over 25 years ago, and says it is still one of the most gratifying parts of her job. “I am continually inspired by how willing people are to share their story,” Dr. Michie says. “It instills a sense of duty to honor their experience and vulnerability.”
From the foundation that these roots provide, Dr. Michie was able to grow the trunk of her tree in empirical bioethics. This growing process occurred through postdoctoral training at both the UNC Center for Genomics and Society and the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, and then continued in her work as a faculty member, first at the University of California San Francisco, and now at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). Dr. Michie’s many areas of interest and study within bioethics represent the branches of her tree. They include genetic and genomic research, new technologies in genetic screening, gene modification, stem cell research, prenatal genetics, and reproductive ethics. In addition to conducting her own research, Dr. Michie serves as Associate Director for the CWRU Bioethics Center for Community Health ANd Genomic Equity, and chairs the CWRU Human Stem Cell Oversight (HSCRO) Committee. Much like all the branches of a tree connect to the same trunk, common themes in Dr. Michie’s work include health equity, disability, stakeholder perspectives, and justice.
The final branch of Dr. Michie’s tree is her work in student education and course programming. She is an associate professor in the Department of Bioethics at CWRU, Co-Director for the PhD in Bioethics Program at CWRU, and Director of the Research Ethics Concentration for the MA Program in Bioethics at CWRU. She also acts as a mentor to undergraduate and graduate students studying bioethics and genetic counseling.
Armed with a passion for and experience in all these areas of study, in 2018 Dr. Michie began to collaborate with a group of scholars about the ethics of gene editing. Some she had worked with for years during postdoctoral research at Stanford (Dr. Megan Allyse and Kelly Ormond), and some were new partnerships, but all of them wanted to incorporate stakeholder perspectives on gene-editing into the big ethics conversations that were happening around the world. The PaSAGE researchers have been working together since these initial conversations and have published several papers centering on stakeholder perspectives.
When asked what one thing she wanted people to know about the PaSAGE study, Dr. Michie said: “We [PaSAGE team members] all had a commitment, from the very beginning, to partner with self-advocates and families of people with genetic conditions, and incorporate their perspectives from beginning to end… this was a commitment that we have never wavered from.”
In her free time, Dr. Michie loves to be creative. She spins wool, weaves, and crochets. She enjoys sharing her creations with her family, friends, colleagues and students.