Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health, including those emerging from advances in biology, medicine, and technologies. It proposes the discussion about moral discernment in society and it is often related to medical policy and practice, but also to broader questions as environment, well-being and public health. Bioethics is concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, theology and philosophy. It includes the study of values relating to primary care, other branches of medicine, ethical education in science, animal, and environmental ethics, and public health.
Prior to the introduction of brain death into law in the mid to late 1970s, all organ transplants from cadaveric donors came from non-heart-beating donors (NHBDs).
Arthur Michael Kleinman is an American psychiatrist, social anthropologist and a professor of medical anthropology, psychiatry and global health and social medicine at Harvard University.
Joseph J. Fins, M.D., D. Hum. Litt., M.A.C.P., F.R.C.P. is an American physician and medical ethicist. He is chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College, where he serves as The E. William Davis Jr., M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics, and Professor of Medicine, Professor of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine in Psychiatry. Fins is also Director of Medical Ethics and an attending physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center. Fins is also a member of the adjunct faculty of Rockefeller University and has served as Associate for Medicine at The Hastings Center. He is the Solomon Center Distinguished Scholar in Medicine, Bioethics and the Law and a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He was appointed by President Bill Clinton to The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy and currently serves on The New York State Task Force on Life and the Law by gubernatorial appointment.
Julian Savulescu is an Australian philosopher and bioethicist. He is Chen Su Lan Centennial Professor in Medical Ethics and director of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at National University of Singapore. He was previously Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and co-director of the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities. He is visiting professorial fellow in Biomedical Ethics at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Australia, and distinguished visiting professor in law at Melbourne University since 2017. He directs the Biomedical Ethics Research Group and is a member of the Centre for Ethics of Pediatric Genomics in Australia. He is a former editor and current board member of the Journal of Medical Ethics, which is ranked as the No.2 journal in bioethics worldwide by Google Scholar Metrics, as of 2022. In addition to his background in applied ethics and philosophy, he also has a background in medicine and neuroscience and completed his MBBS (Hons) and BMedSc at Monash University, graduating top of his class with 18 of 19 final year prizes in Medicine. He edits the Oxford University Press book series, the Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics.
Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology is an academic journal founded in 1993 and the official publication of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (AAPP) which fosters close associations with the American Psychiatric Association. The journal focuses on the overlap of philosophy, psychiatry, and abnormal psychology. It aims to make clinical material accessible to philosophers while advancing philosophical inquiry into the area of psychology. It includes book reviews, original works, and a variety of special columns.
Govert A. den Hartogh is a Dutch moral, legal and political philosopher. He studied theology in Kampen and philosophy in Leiden and Oxford. He received his PhD in philosophy in 1985 from the University of Amsterdam. From 1974 on he worked at the University of Amsterdam as assistant and associate professor of ethics and jurisprudence in the Philosophy Department and the Faculty of Law, as an extra-ordinary professor of medical ethics in the Faculty of Medicine, and as a full professor of ethics and its history in the Philosophy Department. In 1992 he took the initiative of founding the Netherlands School for Research in Practical Philosophy, together with Robert Heeger and Bert Musschenga, and functioned as the school's first director. He retired in 2008. At his retirement his former Ph.D. students published a Festschrift.
Carl Elliott is an American academic working as a professor in department of philosophy at the University of Minnesota.
Sigrid Fry-Revere is an American medical ethicist and lawyer who has worked on many issues in patient care ethics, but most recently has been working on the rights of living organ donors.
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.
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.
Stephen Garrard Post has served on the Board of the John Templeton Foundation (2008-2014), which focuses on virtue and public life. He is a researcher, opinion leader, medical school professor, and best-selling author who has taught at the University of Chicago Medical School, Fordham University-Marymount, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (1988-2008) and Stony Brook University School of Medicine (2008-). He is widely known for his research on the ways in which giving can enhance the health and happiness of the giver, how empathy and compassionate care contribute to patient outcomes, ethical issues in caring for people with dementia, medical professionalism and the virtues, and positive psychology in relation to health and well-being. Post is an elected member of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the New York Academy of Medicine, and the Royal Society of Medicine, London. He was selected nationally as the Public Member of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Composite Committee (2000-2005), and was reappointed for outstanding contributions.
Michael Alan Grodin is Professor of Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights at the Boston University School of Public Health, where he has received the distinguished Faculty Career Award for Research and Scholarship, and 20 teaching awards, including the "Norman A. Scotch Award for Excellence in Teaching." He is also Professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine. In addition, Dr. Grodin is the Director of the Project on Medicine and the Holocaust at the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, and a member of the faculty of the Division of Religious and Theological Studies. He has been on the faculty at Boston University for 35 years. He completed his B.S. degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his M.D. degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and his postdoctoral and fellowship training at UCLA and Harvard University.
Ann M. Mongoven is an American philosophy professor and medical ethicist. She earned her Ph.D. in religious studies/ethics from the University of Virginia in 1996 and a M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2006. Mongoven taught courses at Indiana University/Bloomington before going on to teach at Michigan State University where she currently holds a dual appointment with the philosophy department and the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. Mongoven is also a Michigan State University Lilly Teaching Fellow and was an ethics consultant for the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
The MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, founded in 1981, is a non-profit clinical medical ethics research institute based in the United States. Founded by its director, Mark Siegler, the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics aims to improve patient care and outcomes by promoting research in clinical medical ethics by educating physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals and by helping University of Chicago Medicine patients, families, and health care providers identify and resolve ethical dilemmas. The center has trained over 410 fellows, including many physicians, attorneys, PhDs and bioethicists.
Jeffrey Paul Bishop is a philosopher, bioethicist, author and the Tenet Endowed Chair of Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University. The director of the Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics, he is most widely recognized and cited for work in medical ethics as relating to death and dying in addition to contributions in the field of medical humanities. Bishop is a physician, holds a Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Dallas and serves on the editorial boards of both the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy and the Journal of Christian Bioethics for Oxford University Press.
Daniel Sulmasy is an American medical ethicist and former Franciscan friar. He has been Acting Director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and on the faculty of the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioetics. He is the inaugural Andre Hellegers Professor of Biomedical Ethics, with co-appointments in the Departments of Philosophy and Medicine at Georgetown.
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.
Robert D. Truog is an American bioethicist and pediatrician. He is the Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Medical Ethics, Anaesthesiology & Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, where he is also the Director of the Center for Bioethics. He also practices in the pediatric intensive care unit at Boston Children’s Hospital, where he previously served as chair of the Division of Critical Care Medicine.
Jessica Wilen Berg is an American attorney and specialist in Public Health (MPH), currently serving 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 also Tom J.E. and Bette Lou Walker Professor of Law,Professor in the Departments of Bioethics, and of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at the CWRU School of Medicine. 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.
