Professor Patrick Basham lectures on health care politics in the Government Department at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the founding Director of the Democracy Institute, a London- and Washington-based public policy research organisation.

Basham previously served as a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, where he is currently an Adjunct Scholar. Prior to joining Cato, he served as the founding Director of the Social Affairs Centre at the Fraser Institute, Canada's leading think tank, where he led the Institute's research in the areas of consumer choice and social policy regulation. He wrote his Cambridge University PhD on British and American political marketing.

The author and editor of several books, numerous scholarly studies and research papers, and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, Basham has written extensively about health, diet, and obesity. The Social Affairs Unit published his most recent book, Diet Nation: Exposing the Obesity Crusade, in December 2006.

As a political commentator, Basham lectures on both sides of the Atlantic and appears regularly on radio and television, including BBC, SKY News, ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX News, and CNBC.

His articles have appeared in the Sunday Telegraph, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, New York Post, New York Daily News, Newsday, CBS News Online, Forbes, American Spectator, National Review Online, Reason Online, Apple Daily (Hong Kong), Australian Financial Review, Beirut Times, El Economista (Mexico), Gulf Times (Qatar), National Business Review (NZ), Globe & Mail (Canada), National Post (Canada), New Zealand Herald, Taipei Times, and The Grocer. His research has been reported in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Independent, Sunday Times, Washington Post, The Australian, Business Day (South Africa), and BBC Online.