For 23 years, I was an attorney in the Division of Investment Management at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C. I retired in 2014.

I became interested in medical research while researching treatment options for my then-teenage daughter, who has heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, a genetic disease that causes very high LDL-cholesterol. I am a member of the Walking Gallery of Healthcare.  In addition, I am a member/administrator of the Familial Hypercholesterolemia (FH) Discussion Group on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/47098836197/).  In September 2013, I became a member of the editorial board of Circulation:  Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, one of the American Heart Association journals. I help edit a series of articles by patients or their family members (listed here). I am also a patient reviewer for BMJ and a member of the stakeholder engagement committee for C3FIT, a trial of post-stroke care, funded by PCORI. I am a member of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

Contact me at mannm at comcast.net.  Follow me on Twitter @MarilynMann.

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Disclosures:  My husband and I have invested primarily in the Thrift Savings Plan and in mutual funds. However, after my mother died in March 2020, I inherited some individual stocks and bonds, including some stocks and bonds issued by certain drug and device manufacturers and a health insurance company. Some of these securities were held in an IRA or received a step-up in basis at my mother’s death, and I was able to sell them without major tax consequences. However, some of these securities received a step-up in basis at my father’s death in 2006 and did not receive another step-up in basis at my mother’s death. Selling these latter securities will cause me to incur large capital gains. According, my plan is to sell them over the next couple of years, to spread out the capital gains taxes. As of September 2021, I own stock in Abbott Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson, and Stryker Corp. Update: in January 2022, I sold my remaining shares in Abbott Labs, Johnson & Johnson, and Stryker.

Undate November 2022. Unfortunately, my brother Andrew passed away in March 2022. I inherited some health care related stocks from him, namely Abbott Labs, Johnson & Johnson, Stryker, and United Healthcare. I sold these stocks immediately after they were transferred to my account in October 2022.