Hastings Center News

Remembering George Annas

The Hastings Center for Bioethics mourns the passing of George Annas on May 30. Annas was a Hastings Center Fellow and the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor at Boston University and Director of the Center for Health Law, Ethics and Human Rights at Boston University School of Public Health.

Annas was  “a visionary health law pioneer” who “brought the law squarely into bioethics.” He wrote the “At Law” column for the Hastings Center Report from its inception in 1976 (as “Law and the Life Sciences”) until 1991.

“He was a tireless pioneer and champion of a human-rights-centric approach to bioethics,” said Hastings Center President Emeritus Thomas Murray.

“George had a powerful influence on bioethics from its very early days,” said Stephen Latham, a Hastings Center Fellow who is Director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. “He repeatedly turned everyone’s attention to fundamental questions about how individual liberty was to be honored when it came into conflict with the public good, with medical standards of care, or with the imperatives of biomedical research. He reminded everyone in health law always to be suspicious of concentrated power—even power concentrated in the name of public health, good medical treatment, or scientific advancement.”  

Read more about Annas’s life and accomplishments here.