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Hastings Center News

New Hastings Center Fellows Elected

The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 11 new Fellows. Hastings Center Fellows are a group of individuals of outstanding accomplishment, whose work has informed scholarship and/or public understanding of complex ethical issues in health, health care, life sciences research, and the environment.

Joseph A. Carrese, MD, MPH, FACP, is a professor in the department of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, a member of the division of general internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, and a core faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. He chairs the ethics committee at Bayview and an institutional review board at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His scholarship focuses on clinical ethics and professionalism with a particular interest in medical education and examining ethical issues in the context of cultural diversity.

David DeGrazia, PhD, is a senior research fellow in the department of bioethics at the National Institutes of Health and a professor of philosophy at George Washington University. A philosopher, DeGrazia has published mainly in ethics–both theoretical and applied–with much of his work specifically in bioethics. He is the author or coeditor of seven books, including Creation Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2012), Human Identity and Bioethics (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and Biomedical Ethics (McGraw-Hill), a textbook published through several editions. He has also served as a senior advisor to the staff of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. DeGrazia’s research interests include bioethical theory, moral status, and ethical issues associated with animal research, reprogenetics, and enhancement technologies.

Douglas S. Diekema MD, MPH, is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine.  He is also an attending physician in the emergency department at Seattle Children’s Hospital and serves as the director of education for the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Seattle Children’s Hospital.  He is past-Chair of the Committee on Bioethics of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He is the author of numerous scholarly publications in medical ethics and pediatric emergency medicine and is an editor of Clinical Ethics in Pediatrics: A Case-based Textbook. He was honored by the American Academy of Pediatrics as the 2014 recipient of the William G. Bartholome Award for Ethical Excellence.

Ana S. Iltis, PhD, is the director of the Center for Bioethics, Health and Society and a professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University. She is the cofounder and coeditor of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics and a senior associate editor of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. Her work focuses primarily on the ethical conduct of human research, including research involving children, first-in-human studies, mental health research, informed consent, and risk in research decision making. She is currently studying the ethical, legal, social, and policy implications of revising the 14-day limit on embryo research as well as ethical issues in transplantation.

Jonathan Kimmelman, PhD, is an associate professor in the biomedical ethics unit/social studies of medicine and an associate member of the division of experimental medicine in the Department of Medicine at McGill University. His research concerns the ethical, social, and policy dimensions of translational research. His current projects include an investigation of risk, prediction, validity, and knowledge in drug development. He has received the Institute of Genetics Maud Menten New Investigator Prize, a CIHR New Investigator Award, and a Friedrich Bessel-Humboldt Award.

Inmaculada de Melo-Martin, PhD, MS, is a professor of medical ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College. Most of her work has been on ethical and epistemological issues related to reprogenetics and molecular genetics. She has been particularly concerned with calling attention to the importance of science when making ethical judgments, the importance of ethics when evaluating new scientific and technological developments and proposing public policies, and the importance of attending to the social and political context when assessing science and technology. She is the author of several books, most recently Rethinking Reprogenetics: Enhancing Ethical Analyses of Reprogenetic Technologies (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Richard Sharp, PhD, is the director of the Biomedical Ethics Program, the Center for Individualized Medicine Bioethics Program, and the Clinical and Translational Research Ethics Program at the Mayo Clinic. His research focuses on ethical tensions in medicine and biomedical research. He is currently examining how patients and health care providers view new forms of personalized medicine and clinical interventions enabled by molecular diagnostics. He is a member of the Social, Ethical and Legal Issues Committee of the American College of Medical Genetics. He frequently advises health care organizations on ethical issues and has served on advisory committees for the National Institutes of Health, the Institute of Medicine, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Carter Snead, JD, is the William P. and Hazel B. White director of the Center for Ethics and Culture, and professor of law and concurrent professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame.  He is internationally recognized as a leading expert in public bioethics. His research explores neuroethics, enhancement, stem cell research, abortion, and end-of-life decision-making. Snead has provided advice on the legal and public policy dimensions of bioethical questions to federal government officials and in several intergovernmental groups.

David Wendler, PhD ,is a senior investigator and head of the section on research ethics in the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. He is trained in the philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology. He is an attending on the NIH Bioethics Consultation service, a member of the NIH Addictions institutional review board, and an associate editor for Clinical Trials and the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics. He has served as a consultant to numerous organizations, including the Institute of Medicine, the World Health Organization, and the World Medical Association. His current research focuses on the ethical issues that arise in clinical trials and clinical care with individuals who are unable to give informed consent.

Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH, FACP, is the director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.  He founded the American Medical Association’s Center for Patient Safety, and he has developed training programs focused on bioethics, professionalism, and policy issues.  His research has focused on novel uses of survey data to inform and improve the practical management of ethical issues in health care and public policy.  He is the author of more than 140 published articles, chapters and essays, co-editor of several books, and co-author of a book on fairness in health care benefit design. He is a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and has chaired the Ethics Forum of the American Public Health Association and the Ethics Committee of the Society for General Internal Medicine.

Wei Zhu, PhD, is a scholar and professor of bioethics at Fudan University in China. She has a special interest in informed consent, social justice, human rights, genetic ethics, and research oversight in low and middle-income nations. She has led several major research projects funded by institutions such as the National Social Sciences Fund of China, the Ministry of Health of China, and the Harvard China Fund. She has also proposed policy recommendations for the Chinese government concerning genomic testing, the prevention and treatment of drug dependency and addiction, and ethical guidelines on adult stem cell research. She is currently working to establish a regional ethics committee in Shanghai with the support from Shanghai Municipal Government.

Learn more about and access the full list of Hastings Center Fellows.