Lawrence Oglethorpe Gostin is an American law professor who specializes in public health law. He was a Fulbright Fellow and is best known as the author of the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act and as a significant contributor to journals on medicine and law.
The Kluge Scholars Council is a body of distinguished scholars, convened by the Librarian of Congress to advise on matters related to scholarship at the Library, with special attention to the John W. Kluge Center and the Kluge Prize. Through discussion and reflection, the Council assists in implementing an American tradition linking the activities of thinkers and doers, those who are engaged in the world of ideas with those engaged in the world of affairs.
Hilary Bok is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Bioethics and Moral & Political Theory at Johns Hopkins University. Bok received a B.A. in philosophy from Princeton University in 1981 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1991.
The Hastings Center is an independent, nonpartisan bioethics research institute and think tank based in Garrison, New York.
James Franklin Childress is a philosopher and theologian whose scholarship addresses ethics, particularly biomedical ethics. Currently he is the John Allen Hollingsworth Professor of Ethics at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and teaches public Policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He is also Professor of Medical Education at this university and directs its Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life. He holds a B.A. from Guilford College, a B.D. from Yale Divinity School, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. He was vice-chairman of the national Task Force on Organ Transplantation, and he has also served on the board of directors of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the UNOS Ethics Committee, the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, the Human Gene Therapy Subcommittee, the Biomedical Ethics Advisory Committee, and several Data and Safety Monitoring Boards for NIH clinical trials. From 1996 to 2001, he served on the presidentially-appointed National Bioethics Advisory Commission. He is a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution.
Daniel Isaac Wikler is an American public health educator, philosopher, and medical ethicist. He is currently the Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health in the Department of Global Health and Population of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. He is Director and a core faculty member in the Harvard Program in Ethics and Health (PEH). His current research interests are ethical issues in population and international health, including the allocation of health resources, health research involving human subjects, organ transplant ethics, and ethical dilemmas arising in public health practice, and he teaches several courses each year. He is a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution.
Principlism is an applied ethics approach to the examination of moral dilemmas centering the application of certain ethical principles. This approach to ethical decision-making has been prevalently adopted in various professional fields, largely because it sidesteps complex debates in moral philosophy at the theoretical level.
Since the discovery of ionizing radiation, a number of human radiation experiments have been performed to understand the effects of ionizing radiation and radioactive contamination on the human body, specifically with the element plutonium.
Tom Lamar Beauchamp is an American philosopher specializing in the work of David Hume, moral philosophy, bioethics, and animal ethics. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgetown University, where he was Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics.
Ruth Macklin is an American philosopher and retired professor of bioethics.
The Kennedy Institute of Ethics is one of the most prestigious bioethics institutes in the world. Located at Healy Hall, it was established at Georgetown University in 1971 as a bioethics center, think tank and library. Its first director, André Hellegers, said the institution's goal was to "bring expertise to the new and growing ethical problems in medicine today." The Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation granted $1.35 million to the Institute, contributing to the establishment of its Bioethics Research Library and providing for two Chairs. The Institute was soon in need of more financial support, which it received from Georgetown University and by several public, private and governmental grants. The philosopher Tom Beauchamp and the bioethicist Robert Veatch were among the first scholars to join the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. The institute features a top-ranked graduate program in applied ethics.
Human subject research legislation in the United States can be traced to the early 20th century. Human subject research in the United States was mostly unregulated until the 20th century, as it was throughout the world, until the establishment of various governmental and professional regulations and codes of ethics. Notable – and in some cases, notorious – human subject experiments performed in the US include the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, human radiation experiments, the Milgram obedience experiment and Stanford prison experiments and Project MKULTRA. With growing public awareness of such experimentation, and the evolution of professional ethical standards, such research became regulated by various legislation, most notably, those that introduced and then empowered the institutional review boards.
Carol Levine is a home health-care advocate and the Director of the Families and Health Care Project of the United Hospital Fund.
David DeGrazia is an American moral philosopher specializing in bioethics, animal ethics, and the study of moral status. He is Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University, where he has taught since 1989, and the author or editor of several books on ethics, including Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status (1996), Human Identity and Bioethics (2005), and Creation Ethics: Reproduction, Genetics, and Quality of Life (2012).
Françoise Elvina BaylisFISC is a Canadian bioethicist whose work is at the intersection of applied ethics, health policy, and practice. The focus of her research is on issues of women's health and assisted reproductive technologies, but her research and publication record also extend to such topics as research involving humans, gene editing, novel genetic technologies, public health, the role of bioethics consultants, and neuroethics. Baylis' interest in the impact of bioethics on health and public policy as well as her commitment to citizen engagement]and participatory democracy sees her engage with print, radio, television, and other online publications.
Jeremy Sugarman is an American bioethicist and physician. He is the Harvey M. Meyerhoff Professor of Bioethics and Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American College of Physicians, the National Academy of Medicine, and the Hastings Center.
Jessica Fanzo is an American scientist. She is a Professor of Climate and Director of the Food for Humanity Initiative at the Columbia Climate School. Prior to joining Columbia in July 2023, she was the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food and Agriculture Policy and Ethics at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. She was the first laureate of the Carasso Foundation’s Sustainable Diets Prize in 2012 for her research on sustainable food and diets for long-term human health. In 2024, Fanzo was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Jessica Wilen Berg is an American attorney and specialist in Bioethics and Public Health Law. She is Dean and Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis School of Law. She previously served as co-Dean at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, the first female co-Dean or Dean in the law school's 129-year history. She is a reference book author in the area of informed consent. Her scholarly opinion is often reported by institutions and media on ethical aspects iof innovative biomedical procedures.
Madison Powers is an American philosopher and Francis J. McNamara Jr Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He is a Fellow of the Hastings Center, a recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Investigator Award, and is known for his works on political philosophy and practical ethics.
