Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes 14 New Fellows
The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 14 new fellows. Hastings Center Fellows are a group of more than 200 individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has informed scholarship and public understanding of complex ethical issues in health, health care, science, and technology. Their common distinguishing feature is uncommon insight and impact in areas of critical concern to the Center–how best to understand and manage the inevitable values questions, moral uncertainties, and societal effects that arise as a consequence of advances in the life sciences, the need to improve health and health care for people of all ages, and mitigation of human impact on the natural world.
James M. DuBois, PhD, DSc, is director of the Bioethics Research Center, the Steven J. Bander Professor of Medical Ethics and Professionalism, and professor of psychology and brain sciences at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He directs the National Institutes of Health-funded Professionalism and Integrity in Research Program, the first program designed to serve researchers following lapses in research compliance or integrity. He is founding co-editor of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics: A Journal of Qualitative Research. Dr. DuBois has received more than $12 million in grant funding and is principal investigator of numerous ongoing research projects, including studies on ethical concerns raised by ApoL1 genetic testing of kidney donors with recent African ancestry and evidence-based informed consent practices in clinical trials involving people with dementia. His research interests include empirical research on ethical issues related to informed consent, data sharing, organ transplantation, genetic testing, research integrity, and professional misconduct. His scholarly work also addresses mental health research ethics and the assessment of ethics education outcomes. https://bioethicsresearch.org/people/james-dubois-dsc-
Jacqueline J. (Jackie) Glover, PhD, is a professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and she is the clinical case consultation lead for the University of Colorado’s Center for Bioethics and Humanities. She is the director of the longitudinal Humanities, Ethics and Professionalism (HEP) thread in the School of Medicine curriculum. Dr. Glover serves on the ethics committees and the ethics consult services at both the University of Colorado Hospital and the Children’s Hospital Colorado. She also serves on the university’s research ethics consultation service. She organizes the clinical ethics leads from the Children’s Hospital and the University of Colorado Hospital in their quality improvement efforts. She has had numerous publications in prominent bioethics journals and is a frequent speaker at local and national bioethics meetings. In addition to being directly involved in clinical teaching of students, residents, fellows, and staff, she takes a leadership role in reaching out to hospital ethics committees locally and regionally. https://www.cuanschutz.edu/centers/bioethicshumanities/facultystaff/jackie-glover
Kenneth W. Goodman, PhD, FACMI, FACE, is founder and director of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy and co-director of the university’s Ethics Programs. The institute has been designated a World Health Organization Collaborating Center in Ethics and Global Health Policy, one of 12 in the world and the only one in the United States. He is a professor in his institution’s department of medicine and jointly in philosophy and other departments. He is a co-founder of the North American Center for the Study of Ethics and Health Information Technology. He chairs the ethics committee of the American Medical Informatics Association and co-founded the organization’s Ethical, Legal and Social Issues Working Group. He is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, the only philosopher or ethicist to be elected. He is a fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and past chair of its ethics committee. Dr. Goodman’s research emphasizes issues in health information technology or biomedical informatics, epidemiology, and public health. He chairs two hospital ethics committees. He is the author of several books, most recently Ethics, Medicine, and Information Technology: Intelligent Machines and the Transformation of Health Care. https://bioethics.miami.edu/about-us/people/faculty/main-faculty/kenneth-w-goodman/index.html
Scott D. Halpern, MD, PhD, MBE, is the John M. Eisenberg Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, and Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and a practicing critical care doctor. He is the founding director of the Palliative and Advanced Illness Research (PAIR) Center, which generates evidence to advance policies and practices that improve the lives of all people affected by serious illness, and is principal investigator of the National Institute on Aging-funded Penn Roybal P30 Center on Palliative Care in Dementia. His research awards include AcademyHealth’s Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award, the Young Leader Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the American Federation for Medical Research’s Outstanding Investigator Award for the best scientist in any field under the age of 45, and the Association of Clinical and Translational Science’s Distinguished Investigator Award. His mentoring awards include the John Hansen-Flaschen Award for Outstanding Mentorship and the Arthur K. Asbury Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award. He has written more than 280 articles in the peer-reviewed literature, is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians, and serves on the editorial boards of the Annals of Internal Medicine and the American Journal of Bioethics. https://ldi.upenn.edu/expert/scott-d-halpern-md-phd
Stephen R. Latham, JD, PhD, is director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. Before entering academia full time, he was secretary to the American Medical Association’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. He has been a graduate fellow of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center on Ethics; a research fellow of the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities; a vice-chair of the American Bar Association’s Health Law Section’s Interest Group on Medical Research, Biotechnology and Clinical Ethics; and a board member and secretary of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, from which he received a Distinguished Service Award. Latham’s 100-plus publications on bioethics and health law have appeared in law reviews, scientific and medical journals, university press books, and in bioethics journals. He serves as a contributing editor of the Hastings Center Report. He has co-edited several books including the 6-volume Encyclopedia of Bioethics (MacMillan Reference USA, 4th ed. 2014); Genetics, Ethics and Education (Cambridge University Press, 2018); and The American Medical Ethics Revolution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), which was named by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries as an Outstanding Academic Title of 2000. Latham’s current work deals with a wide range of bioethics issues, including reviving anoxic pig-brains, conducting research on the newly-dead, using social media to determine the causes of individuals’ risky sexual behavior, and using e-health alerts to enhance the treatment of kidney failure during hospitalization. He has also recently began teaching and researching in environmental ethics. Latham has served for several years as faculty chair of Yale’s human subjects committee (its social/behavioral IRB), and serves as a vice-chair of one of Yale’s biomedical IRBs and co-chair of its embryonic stem cell research oversight committee. He also does clinical ethics consultation with the pediatric ethics committee at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital and on the medical review board of Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families. https://medicine.yale.edu/profile/stephen_latham/?tab=bio
James V. Lavery, PhD, is the inaugural Conrad N. Hilton Chair in Global Health Ethics, Professor in the Hubert Department of Global Health in the Rollins School of Public Health, and faculty of the Center for Ethics, Emory University. Prior to joining the Emory faculty, he was a research scientist and managing director of the Centre for Ethical, Social & Cultural Risk at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital (a University of Toronto teaching hospital) and an associate professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Institute of Medical Science, and Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto. From 2000 to 2003 he was the first bioethicist at the Fogarty International Center, and a faculty member in the Warren G. Magnuson Clinical Center Department of Bioethics, of the National Institutes of Health. From 2005 to 2015 Dr. Lavery was the co-principal investigator of the Ethical, Social and Cultural Program for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health and Global Development programs. He is currently leading the development of the Human Engagement Learning Platform (HELP) for Global Health at Emory University, to support improvements in stakeholder engagement, organizational learning, knowledge co-production strategies, and fair partnership practices in global health and global development programs. His research focuses primarily on neglected tropical disease programming. He was the 2017 recipient of the Global Forum for Bioethics in Research Award for Contributions to Progress in International Research. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Council for Health Research for Development (COHRED) USA, a member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the Health Campaign Effectiveness Coalition at the Task Force for Global Health, and a member of the Bioethics Advisory Panel of Pfizer, Inc. https://ethics.emory.edu/who-we-are/our-people/faculty/core/lavery-jim.html
Kenneth M. Ludmerer, MD, is an internist, a medical educator, and a historian of medicine. He is a professor of medicine and the Mabel Dorn Reeder Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine in the School of Medicine and professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Ludmerer is best known for his work in medical education and health care policy. He is the author of several books, including Learning to Heal (1985), on the creation of America’s system of medical education, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize. His latest book, Let Me Heal: The Opportunity to Preserve Excellence in American Medicine (2014), is the first-ever account of the residency system in the United States and its relation to the quality of patient care in the country. The book has influenced standards and policies in graduate medical education in America, most notably, providing the intellectual foundation of the revised Common Program Requirements of the ACGME, which took effect in 2017. Dr. Ludmerer has received wide recognition for his work, including being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Clinical and Climatological Association. https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/about/faculty-recognition/distinguished-faculty-awards/2018-2/kenneth-m-ludmerer-md/
Debra JH Mathews, PhD, MA, is well known for her scholarship and contributions to national and international thought and debates at the intersection of emerging biomedical technologies, ethics, and policy. Dr. Mathews is the assistant director for science programs for the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, and an associate professor in the department of genetic medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Mathews has spent time at the Genetics and Public Policy Center, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues under President Obama, and the National Academy of Medicine, working in various capacities on science policy. Dr. Mathews’s academic work focuses on ethics and policy issues raised by emerging biotechnologies, with particular focus on genetics, stem cell science, neuroscience, and synthetic biology. She currently serves as the chair of the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission, is a member of the board of directors and executive committee of the International Neuroethics Society, and is an academic collaborator helping to shape and guide the work of the National Academy of Medicine’s new Committee on Emerging Science, Technology, and Innovation in health and medicine. https://bioethics.jhu.edu/people/profile/debra-mathews/
Maria Merritt, PhD, is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of International Health (Health Systems Program). Dr. Merritt is a bioethicist whose home discipline is philosophy, specializing in moral philosophy. Her research focuses on two areas of inquiry: 1) delineating health researchers’ ethical responsibilities in relation to participants’ health needs in low resource settings and 2) representing social justice concerns in the economic evaluation of public health programs meant to benefit disadvantaged populations. Leading teams with expertise in health economics, social science, and infectious diseases, she has recently focused on developing an innovative formal methodology to assess social justice impacts in the economic evaluation of novel treatment regimens for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, and of new technologies to diagnose and treat neglected tropical diseases. As the inaugural associate chair for student matters in the Bloomberg School’s Department of International Health (2016-2020), she received the School’s Student Assembly Special Recognition Award for Outstanding Commitment to Student Success. Dr. Merritt is an alumna of the Greenwall Faculty Scholars program and is affiliated with the National Institutes of Health as a 2000-2002 postdoctoral Fellow and a 2020-2021 visiting scholar. https://www.jhsph.edu/faculty/directory/profile/1815/maria-merritt
Joseph Millum, PhD, is a bioethicist and ethics consultant with the Clinical Center Department of Bioethics and the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Millum’s academic training is in philosophy and economics. His numerous publications cover a wide range of topics within research ethics and health policy. The focus of his research includes: 1) consent and how it can be invalidated, 2) the rights and responsibilities of parents, 3) the ethical design of clinical research studies conducted in low- and middle-income countries, 4) international bioethics education, and 5) the allocation of scarce resources for health care and health research. Dr. Millum’s books include Global Justice and Bioethics (2012), The Moral Foundations of Parenthood (2018), Global Health Priority-Setting: Beyond Cost-Effectiveness (2020), and A Theory of Bioethics (forthcoming). https://www.bioethics.nih.gov/people/millum-bio.shtml
Vardit Ravitsky, PhD, is full professor in the bioethics program in the School of Public Health at the University of Montreal. She is president of the International Association of Bioethics and director of Ethics and Health at the Center for Research on Ethics. She a 2020 Trudeau Foundation Fellow and chair of the Foundation’s Covid-19 impact committee, as well as fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. She is member of the Standing Committee on Ethics of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and of the Institute Advisory Board of CIHR’s Institute of Genetics. She is also member of the National Human Genome Research Institute’s (NHGRI) Genomics & Society working group. Her research focuses on the ethics of genomics and reproduction and is funded by Canada’s leading funding agencies. She has published over 160 articles and commentaries on bioethical issues. Ravitsky’s research covers a variety of topics such as, public funding of in-vitro fertilization, the use of surplus frozen embryos, posthumous reproduction, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, gamete donation, epigenetics, prenatal testing (in particular the ethical, social and legal aspects of noninvasive prenatal testing), germline and somatic gene editing, and mitochondrial replacement. She served as a senior policy advisor at CIHR’s Ethics Office and a consultant to Genome Canada on the ethical, economic, environmental, legal, and social implications of genomics. Vardit Ravitsky, PhD – RQR (umontreal.ca)
Jennifer Prah Ruger, PhD, is the Amartya Sen Professor of Health Equity, Economics, and Policy in the School of Social Policy & Practice, and professor of medical ethics and health policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Ruger is the founder and director of the Health Equity and Policy Lab, which conducts quantitative and qualitative research on the equity implications of health and social policies. Dr. Ruger is a leading scholar of global and domestic health policy and public health. She conducts theoretical and empirical studies of health equity to reduce global and national health inequities with a focus on the most impoverished populations worldwide, especially women and children. Dr. Ruger studies critical health policy and public health problems such as the equity and efficiency of health system access, financing, resource allocation, policy reform, and the social determinants of health. Her scholarship includes areas such as global health justice, global health governance, health and social justice, and shared health governance. Her research is conducted internationally and nationally, including work in Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Malaysia, Morocco, South Korea, South Africa, the United States, and Vietnam. https://www.sp2.upenn.edu/people/view/jennifer-prah-ruger/
Jackie Leach Scully, PhD, is an internationally recognized bioethicist specializing in disability and feminist bioethics. She is a professor of bioethics and director of the Disability Innovation Institute at UNSW Sydney (Australia). With a research background in molecular biology and neurobiology, she held research fellowships at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and the University of Basel, Switzerland, before shifting fields to help establish the first interdisciplinary unit for bioethics at Basel, followed by positions as director of research and executive director of the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Centre at Newcastle University in the U.K. Her research has focused on moral thinking and the formation of moral beliefs and attitudes across a wide range of topics in bioethics, including assisted reproduction, prenatal and postnatal genetic testing, gene therapies, genome editing, epigenetics, transplantation and prosthetics, bioethics in disasters and emergencies, biometric identification, artificial intelligence and automated systems. In much of her work she examines the effect of biomedical technologies on people with disability and other socially marginalized groups, drawing on feminist and disability philosophy and empirical methods; her book Disability Bioethics: Moral Bodies, Moral Difference, published in 2008, is considered a classic. She is editor of the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, Chair of the New South Wales Health Ethics Advisory Panel, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the Royal Society of Arts in the U.K. https://www.disabilityinnovation.unsw.edu.au/node/159
James A. Tulsky, MD, is chair of the department of psychosocial oncology and palliative care at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, chief of the division of palliative medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and professor of medicine and codirector of the Center for Palliative Care at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Tulsky has a longstanding interest in doctor-patient communication and quality of life in serious illness and has published widely in these areas. His research focuses on the evaluation and enhancement of communication between oncologists and patients with advanced cancer; identification of clinical, psychosocial, and spiritual trajectories of patients at the end of life; development of self-management interventions for patients with life-limiting illness; and evaluating the role of palliative care in congestive heart failure. He is a founding director of VitalTalk (www.vitaltalk.org) a nonprofit organization devoted to nurturing healthier connections between clinicians and patients through communication skills teaching. From 1993 to 2015 he was on faculty at Duke University where his last position was professor of medicine and nursing and chief of Duke Palliative Care. He is the recipient of the 2002 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (the highest national award given by the White House Office of Science and Technology for early career investigators), the 2006 Award for Research Excellence from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, the 2013 George L. Engel Award from the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare for “outstanding research contributing to the theory, practice and teaching of effective health care communication and related skills,” and the 2014 American Cancer Society Pathfinder in Palliative Care award. https://www.dfhcc.harvard.edu/insider/member-detail/member/james-a-tulsky-md/