Hastings Center News

Daniel Callahan Pays Tribute to Two Hastings Center Fellows

Two distinguished bioethics scholars and Fellows of The Hastings Center died recently: H. Tristram Englehardt Jr. and Baruch Brody. They were among the early leaders of the new field of bioethics developing in the 1970s.

Englehardt, with a PhD in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin and an MD from Tulane, was a professor of history and philosophy of medicine at Rice University and Professor Emeritus at Baylor College of Medicine, and the editor of the journal Christian Bioethics. He was a co-editor with me of four volumes of papers from a Hastings Center project on science and ethics, published in the late ‘70s.

Baruch Brody, with a PhD in philosophy from Princeton, was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Rice University and Director of the Center for Ethics, Medicine and Policy Issues at Baylor College of Medicine. He wrote an important book on abortion, Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life (MIT, 1975). In recent years he turned his interest to the philosophy of religion and Judaism. He was buried in Jerusalem.

Brody and Englehardt left important legacies to their universities and bioethics. But both will be remembered as well for their lively personalities and engaging conversations.

– Daniel Callahan, cofounder and President Emeritus, The Hastings Center