Bioethics research, education, and service provision have, since the 1970s, been focused in research centers or Research institutes. While the founding centers of bioethics scholarship are North American, notably The Hastings Center and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics in the US, over subsequent decades many others such centers have emerged globally. Note that some of these centers have also been involved in hosting scholarly and professional journals (List of bioethics journals) and participating in bioethics education (List of masters programs in bioethics, List of doctoral programs in bioethics).
Hans-Martin Sass, is a bioethicist. He is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany, and a Senior Research Scholar Emeritus at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, Washington DC.
Mark Kuczewski is an American philosopher and bioethicist who has been a key contributor to the New Professionalism movement in medicine and medical education. In general, interest in professionalism has been widespread in medicine probably owing to the increasing regulatory and economic pressures on the practice of medicine. Many physicians have sought to identify the focal meaning of what it is to be a doctor in an effort to revitalize the profession. Kuczewski has been among a group that includes Richard and Sylvia Creuss, John Coulehan, and Matthew Wynia who see medical professionalism as including a commitment to social justice. That is, while professionalism entails such things as etiquette, communication skills, and basic medical ethics, professions are also expected to be leaders in educating the public and in advocating for the health of the public. Such leadership requires an understanding of the factors that lead some patient populations to be underserved and a commitment to bringing about social change to ameliorate these problems. The New Professionalism movement in medicine is a revival of communitarian bioethics that focus on the kinds of people and society we wish to be rather than on particular ethical questions of right and wrong. This focus on the relationship between the professional and the community can have important implications for medical education and professional development. While not eschewing case analysis and problem solving, the emphasis on the development of the person has created a renewed interest in narrative methods and reflection. Kuczewski has been an outspoken critic of efforts in medical education to focus on quantitative measures of professionalism education. He has argued that in an effort to make professionalism education “objective,” many medical educators are equating professionalism with trivial but easily measured behaviors. Kuczewski’s interest in professionalism and social justice has led him to pursue ethical issues in the interactions between medicine and recent immigrant populations. He has brought his work in communitarian and casuistic methods to bear on questions such as medical repatriation, insurance for undocumented immigrants, and the eligibility of DREAMers to become practicing physicians. His scholarship and advocacy was the catalyst for the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine becoming the first medical school in the United States to explicitly welcome applications from DREAMers with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status. Under Kuczewski’s direction, the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy at Loyola University Chicago has become a leader in educational programming to promote the relationship between medical professionalism and social justice. The Neiswanger Institute has contributed elements to the Stritch curriculum that explore the relationship between the business of medicine and social justice. The Institute also has online master of arts and doctoral programs that incorporating public health and leadership training in order to help health care professionals across the United States to promote service to the underserved. Kuczewski was elected president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and served a two-year term from 2009 to 2011. The ASBH is the major professional association in the United States for individuals engaged in bioethics and medical humanities. During his term, the society aggressively began moving toward a process called Quality Attestation that will attest to the credentials and expected competence of clinical ethics consultants.
The Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association in Berlin is one of the 18 institutions that make up the Helmholtz Association. It combines basic molecular biology research with clinical research and is dedicated to the research foci of systems medicine and cardiovascular diseases. The research center is named after the Berlin-born biophysicist and Nobel laureate Max Delbrück. The center is headed by Maike Sander.
The National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia was established in August 2007, with support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Institute of Mental Health and Addiction, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund, the Canada Research Chairs program, the UBC Brain Research Centre and the UBC Institute of Mental Health. Co-founded by Judy Illes and Peter Reiner, the Core studies neuroethics, with particular focus on ethics in neurodegenerative disease and regenerative medicine, international and cross-cultural challenges in brain research, neuroimaging and ethics, the neuroethics of enhancement, and personalized medicine.
Nikola Biller-Andorno is a German bioethicist. She is Professor and Director of the Institute of Biomedical Ethics of the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
Clinical ethics support services initially developed in the United States of America, following court cases such as the Karen Ann Quinlan case, which stressed the need for mechanisms to resolve ethical disputes within health care. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations requirement for hospitals, nursing homes, and home care agencies to have a standing mechanism to address ethical issues has also fostered this development.
Elio Sgreccia was an Italian bioethicist and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, director of the international medical ethics journal Medicina e Morale, president of the Ut Vitam Habeant Foundation and the Donum Vitae Association of the Diocese of Rome, and honorary president of the International Federation of Bioethics Centers and Institutes of Personalist Inspiration (FIBIP).
Frank W. Stahnisch is a historian of medicine and neuroscience at the University of Calgary in Canada, where he holds the endowed Alberta Medical Foundation/Hannah Professorship in the History of Medicine and Health Care. He is jointly appointed in the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, and the Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, and is a member of the Calgary Hotchkiss Brain Institute and the O'Brien Institute for Public Health. He has also received an adjunct professorship in the Department of Classics and Religion of the Faculty of Arts. His research interests in the history and philosophy of the biomedical sciences cover: the development of modern physiology and experimental medicine, the history of neuroscience and the history of psychiatry, as well as the development of modern medical visualization practices. Since 2015, he has succeeded Professor Malcolm Macmillan as an Editor-in-Chief of the international "Journal of the History of the Neurosciences", and since 2021 he is also an Associate Editor for the History and Philosophy of the Behavioural Neurosciences with "Frontiers in Psychology"
Dominik Gross is a German bioethicist and historian of medicine. He is Professor and Director of the Institute of History, Theory and Ethics in Medicine at the RWTH Aachen University, Germany.
Christoph Rehmann-Sutter is a philosopher and bioethicist. He is holding a professorship for theory and ethics in biosciences at the Institute for History of Medicine and Science Studies at the University of Lübeck in Germany.
Jamie Lindemann Nelson is a philosophy professor and bioethicist currently teaching at Michigan State University. Nelson earned her doctorate in philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1980 and taught at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and St. John's University before moving to Michigan State University. In addition, Nelson was an Associate for Ethical Studies at The Hastings Center from 1990–95 and is both a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow and a Fellow of the Hastings Center. Nelson usually teaches courses on biomedical ethics, ethical theory, moral psychology, feminist theory, and philosophy of language.
Fuat Shamoun Oduncu is a German hematologist, oncologist and biomedical ethicist. He is professor for medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and known for his work in the fields of oncology, palliative care, medical ethics and health economics.
Christiane Woopen is a German medical ethicist. She was appointed Professor for Ethics and Theory of Medicine at the University of Cologne in 2009. There she is Executive Director of ceres, an interdepartmental institution created by the Rector and five of the six Faculties of Cologne University. Furthermore, she is Head of the Research Unit Ethics at the Faculty of Medicine and was from 2011 to 2019 Vice-Dean for Academic Development and Gender of that Faculty. From 2012 to 2016 she was Chair of the German Ethics Council and from 2014 to 2016 President of the Global Summit of National Ethics/Bioethics Committees. She has been portrayed by various periodicals.
Claudia Wiesemann is a German medical ethicist and medical historian. She is full professor and head of the Department of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine at Göttingen University Medical Center. Being a member of the German Ethics Council since 2012, she was elected Deputy Chair in 2016.
Florian Steger is a German medical historian and medical ethicist.
Bryn Williams-Jones is a Canadian bioethicist, professor and director of the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the School of Public Health, Université de Montréal. He is co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Canadian Journal of Bioethics/Revue canadienne de bioéthique, the first open access bilingual bioethics journal in Canada, and co-director of the Ethics branch of the International Observatory on the Social Impact of AI and Digital Technology (OBVIA). Williams-Jones is a member of the Centre for Research in Public Health (CReSP), the Centre for Ethics Research (CRÉ), the Institute for Applied Ethics (IDÉA) of the Université Laval, and fellow of The Hastings Center.
Thomas Schlich is a German-Canadian historian of medicine known for his work on the history of surgery.
Jost Benedum was a German historian of medecine.