Senator and Professor John Crown

John Crown is a cancer specialist and researcher, and an independent member of Seanad Éireann (the Irish Senate).

Born in New York to Irish parents, John returned to Ireland as a young boy and received his education in Synge Street, and University College medical school. He undertook specialist training in oncology (cancer medicine) at Mount Sinai hospital in New York and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre. He joined the faculty of Memorial Sloan Kettering in 1989.

In 1993 he returned to Ireland to take up position in St. Vincent’s University Hospital, and University College Dublin.

He is the founder of the All-Ireland Cooperative Oncology Research Group (ICORG), the Irish Society of Medical Oncology, Molecular Therapeutics for Cancer Ireland (MTCI) and the co-founder of the Anglo Celtic Co-operative Oncology Group. He is a member of scientific committees of Los Angeles based translational research in oncology, and several other major international cancer research groups.

John has had a long involvement in health care policy commentary and advocacy and has been a very frequent contributor to the Irish print and broadcast media over the years. He was an early and has been a consistent proponent of a major transformation of Irish healthcare into a German style insurance-based model which would allow public and private insurers, and public and private institutions and doctors, to compete for the custom of a universally insured population.

In 2011 John was elected to the Irish Senate (Seanad Éireann) through the National University of Ireland (NUI) constituency.

In the Senate he has continued his commitment to health reform, highlighting deficiencies not only in cancer services, but in other areas of the health service.

John has been heavily involved in tobacco control efforts, and has sponsored two tobacco-related bills, one of which has passed multiple stages of the Irish parliament and has been supported by the Government. This bill would ban smoking in cars where under-age children are present.

John also has a major interest in constitutional reform and has authored an Irish Senate reform bill which has passed several stages of votes in the Irish parliament.

In October 2013 a national referendum was held on the issue of abolishing the Senate. John was the organiser of an umbrella group of opposition party-allied and independent parliamentarians who opposed the Government’s wish to abolish the Senate, in favour of the type of reform that John’s bill had espoused.

John attributed that to the many public and broadcast debates coming up to the Referendum. The no-side campaign, won the victory, with the defeat of the Government plans to abolish the Senate.

John sees his political work as an extension of the advocacy work he undertook on behalf of the health service reform and has very definite ideas for the need to reform the Irish political landscape.

Bio as dictated by John 27/02/2014