Joseph J. Fins

Joseph J. Fins

M.D., M.A.C.P., F.R.C.P.

Board Chair

Joseph J. Fins, M.D., M.A.C.P., F.R.C.P., is The E. William Davis, Jr. M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics and chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College where he is a tenured professor of medicine, professor of medicine in psychiatry, professor of medical ethics in neurology, professor of medical ethics in rehabilitation medicine, and professor of health care policy and research. He is the founding chair of the ethics committee of New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center where he is an attending physician and director of medical ethics. A member of the adjunct faculty of Rockefeller University and senior attending physician at The Rockefeller University Hospital, he co-directs, the Consortium for the Advanced Study of Brain Injury (CASBI) at Weill Cornell Medicine and Rockefeller. In 2014, he served as the Dwight H. Terry Visiting Scholar in Bioethics and visiting professor in the history of medicine at Yale. In 2015, he was appointed the Solomon Center Distinguished Scholar in Medicine, Bioethics and the Law at Yale Law School and directs CASBI@YLS. He is currently a visiting professor of law at Yale Law School in addition to his appointment at Weill Cornell Medicine.

The author of over 400 publications, his most recent book is Rights Come to Mind: Brain Injury, Ethics and The Struggle for Consciousness (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Dr. Fins is also the author of A Palliative Ethic of Care: Clinical Wisdom at Life’s End (Jones and Bartlett, 2006). Dr. Fins is a co-author of the 2007 Nature paper describing the first use of deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the minimally conscious state. He is currently a co-investigator on an NIH BRAIN Initiative grant studying DBS in severe to moderate traumatic brain injury and principal investigator on an RO1 entitled, “Cognitive Restoration: Neuroethics and Disability Rights.”

President-elect of the International Neuroethics Society, Dr. Fins is a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and a member of board of trustees and fellow of The Hastings Center. He serves on the International Academic Council of the Instituto de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Salud Gregorio Marañón de la Fundación Ortega-Marañón, Madrid, Spain.

Dr. Fins is an elected Member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) of the National Academies of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Academico de Honor (Honored Academic) of the  Real Academia Nacional de Medicina de España (the Royal National Academy of Medicine of Spain).