Jeremy Sugarman

“Ethical Controversies in Medicine and Medical Research: The Interplay of Secular Bioethics and Religion”

Clinical medicine and medical research inevitably involve challenging ethical issues. Navigating such issues appropriately can necessitate balancing competing religious and secular values. This presentation will describe the emergence of secular bioethics and then examine a rich case example.

Jeremy Sugarman, MD, MPH, MA is the Harvey M. Meyerhoff Professor of Bioethics and Medicine, professor of medicine, professor of Health Policy and Management, and deputy director for medicine of the Berman Institute of Bioethics at the Johns Hopkins University. He is an internationally recognized leader in the field of biomedical ethics with particular expertise in applying empirical methods and evidence-based standards for evaluating and analyzing bioethical issues. His contributions to both medical ethics and policy include his work on the ethics of informed consent, umbilical cord blood banking, stem cell research, international HIV prevention research, global health and research oversight.

Dr. Sugarman is the author of over 300 articles, reviews and book chapters.  He has also edited or co-edited four books (Beyond Consent: Seeking Justice in Research; Ethics of Research with Human Subjects: Selected Policies and Resources; Ethics in Primary Care; and Methods in Medical Ethics).  Dr. Sugarman is a contributing editor for IRB and is on the editorial boards of several academic journals.

Dr. Sugarman consults and speaks internationally on a range of issues related to bioethics. He served as senior policy and research analyst for the White House Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, consultant to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and Senior Advisor to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. He also served on the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission.

He was the founding director of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and History of Medicine at Duke University where he was also a professor of medicine and philosophy. He is a faculty affiliate of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University and an Academic Icon of the University of Malaya. He received a Doctor of Science, honoris causa, from New York Medical College.

Dr. Sugarman is currently a member of the Scientific and Research Advisory Board for the Canadian Blood Service and the Ethics and Public Policy Committees of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. He is co-chair of the Johns Hopkins’ Institutional Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee. In addition, he is chair of the Ethics Working Group of the HIV Prevention Trials Network and co-leads the Ethics and Regulatory Core of the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory.

Dr. Sugarman has been elected as a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, and the Institute of Medicine. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American College of Physicians and the Hastings Center.