Additional Scholars

Nancy Berlinger is Deputy Director and Research Scholar at The Hastings Center.  Her research interests focus on clinical ethics and include: end of life care; ethics in health care chaplaincy; ethics in cancer care; conscientious objection and moral distress in health care; patient safety and the resolution of medical harm; and ethics education for pandemic planners.  Broader interests include narrative ethics and medical humanities. Currently, she directs a research project that is revising the influential Hastings Center guidelines on end-of-life care.  This project is funded by the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation and the Albert Sussman Charitable Remainder Annuity Trust.  She recently completed a research project, funded by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, which examined how professional chaplains define “quality” within their own practice and profession, and how these definitions correspond to how chaplaincy is represented in the health care “QI” movement and in efforts to advance patient-centered care.  Berlinger is the author of After Harm: Medical Error and the Ethics of Forgiveness and is currently developing a project on cancer “survivorship” and the future of cancer care.  She is a graduate of Smith College and holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Glasgow and the M.Div. in Christian Ethics from Union Theological Seminary.
Click here for Nancy Berlinger’s Hastings Center page

Bruce Jennings is Senior Fellow at the Center for Humans and Nature, where he engages in research, writing, public speaking, and consulting. He is editor of the Center’s journal, Minding Nature. His recent book, which grew out of Center research, was published in the spring of 2016 by West Virginia University Press—Ecological Governance: Toward a New Social Contract with the Earth. Jennings is also the co-editor with Ceara Donnelley of Frog Pond Philosophy, a collection of essays by the late Strachan Donnelley—founder and first president of the Center for Humans and Nature; and co-editor with Christopher J. Orr and Kaitlin Kish of Liberty and the Ecological Crisis: Freedom on a Finite Planet. He holds faculty appointments at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society and the Yale University School of Public Health. He also serves as a Senior Advisor and Fellow at the Hastings Center, where he worked for 26 years, and served as Executive Director from 1991–99. In 2011 Jennings was named Editor-in-Chief in charge of preparing a new edition of the Encyclopedia of Bioethics, the standard reference work in his field. Completed and published in 2014, this 6 volume work is entitled Bioethics, 4th Edition and is published by Macmillan Reference USA. He has done work in the area of educational and curriculum development and has co-developed three major curricula: “Decisions Near the End of Life” (Education Development Center, 1989-96); “New Choices, New Responsibilities: Ethical Issues in the Life Sciences” (The Hastings Center, 1990-1996) and “Ethics and Public Health: Model Curriculum” (Association of Schools of Public Health, 2003). From 2003-2009 Jennings served first as member and subsequently as Chair of the Ethics Advisory Committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He has been a member of the boards of directors of several scholarly and professional organizations, including the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (2000-2003) and the Hospice and Palliative Care Association of New York State (1997-2003). A political scientist by training (Yale University BA 1971 and Princeton University MA 1973), he has written and edited 28 books and has published approximately 200 articles on ethics, political theory, and public policy issues. Among his other books are Regulating Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis in the United States: The Limits of Unlimited Selection. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Hospice Ethics: Policy and Practice in Palliative Care (Oxford University Press, 2014); The Hastings Center Guidelines for Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment and Care Near the End of Life, Revised and Expanded Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 2013), Public Health Ethics: Theory, Policy and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2007), and The Perversion of Autonomy: the Uses of Coercion and Constraints in a Liberal Society, (Georgetown University Press, 2003). Click here for Bruce Jennings’ Center for Humans and Nature page

Josephine Johnston is a New Zealand-trained lawyer with a MA in Bioethics and Health Law from the University of Otago.  She joined the staff of the Hastings Center in August of 2003 as a Research Scholar.  At the Center, Ms. Johnston’s research currently focuses on the controversies over the use of psychotropic drugs and children and the debates over the meaning of neuroimages.  She has written about the potential for patents to act as barriers to access essential medicines and biological materials, ethical issues arising in the management of financial conflicts of interest in biomedical research, stem cell research, and assisted reproduction. She is also Director of Research Operations at the Center and manages their visiting scholar and intern programs.  Before coming to the Hastings Center, Ms. Johnston worked on ethical and legal issues in gene therapy and stem cell research at Dalhousie University’s department of bioethics in Halifax, Canada.  She also spent a year as the research assistant for the NIH grant “Ethnicity, Citizenship, Family: Identity after the Human Genome Project” at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics. Before undertaking her Master’s work, she practiced law in both New Zealand and Germany.
Click here for Josephine Johnston’s Hastings Center page

Gregory E. Kaebnick is a Research Scholar at The Hastings Center, as well as the Director of the Editorial Department and editor of the Hastings Center Report and Bioethics Forum.  He is interested in the kinds of values that figure in thinking about new biotechnology and particularly in the way people think about nature and human nature. This work has evolved out of earlier work on the nature and status of moral values and the structure of moral deliberation.  Dr. Kaebnick is currently leading The Hastings Center research project titled “The Ideal of Nature: Appeals to Nature in Debates about Biotechnology and the Environment.”  In “Genetic Ties and the Future of the Family,” he explored the ramifications of genetic paternity testing for the parent-child relationship.  In the recently concluded “Crafting Tools for Public Conversation about Behavioral Genetics,” he addressed the implications of behavioral genetics for human freedom.  He received his PhD (1998) and MS (1994) in philosophy from the University of Minnesota and his BA in religion from Swarthmore College. Click here for Gregory Kaebnick’s Hastings Center page

Bonnie Kaplan PhD, FACMI, is a Lecturer in Medical Informatics at the Yale School of Medicine, a Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics Center Scholar, a Faculty Fellow of the Information Society Project at the Yale Law School, and affiliate faculty of the Program for Bioethics at the Yale School of Medicine.  She has taught undergraduate through post-doctoral and professional courses in business, medical, nursing, and arts and sciences programs, as well as on-line graduate and certificate courses in biomedical and nursing informatics.  Her research and consulting focuses on ways that information technology in health care relates to social, legal, organizational, professional, and personal norms, goals, values, ethics, and identities.  In looking at how people react to and interact with information technologies, and why they do so, she faces both the ethics of her own research and the implications of common practices in health care and medical informatics.  She has published and given keynote conference talks and colloquia on ethical and social concerns pertaining to: new home care automated systems; assistive interactive robotics; longitudinal electronic health records; health information technology and end of life care; telehealth and telemedicine technologies; privacy; and other legal and ethical issues.  She is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and chaired the International Medical Informatics Association’s Working Group on Organizational and Social Issues for many years.  She is past chair of both the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues Working Group and the People and Organizational Issues Working Group of the American Medical Informatics Association. At the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, she was a founding chair of the Research Working Group on Technology and Ethics and ran its monthly speaker series for five years.  Also at Yale, she founded and chairs the Whitney Humanities Center Working Group on Science, Technology, and Utopian Visions.  Dr. Kaplan is a recipient of the American  Medical Informatics Association President’s Award and a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics.  She earned her interdisciplinary BA at Cornell University in mathematics and computer science and her MA and PhD from the University of Chicago in history of science.  Her doctoral dissertation concerned the development of medical informatics and its relationship with health care policy. Click here for Bonnie Kaplan’s Yale School of Medicine page

Natalie Kofler, PhD is a trained molecular biologist and the founding director of Editing Nature, a global initiative to steer responsible development and deployment of environmental genetic technologies. She currently serves as Advisor and Curriculum Lead for the Scientific Citizenship Initiative at Harvard Medical School. She was a Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics in 2020-21. Natalie’s work navigates the technical, ecological, and ethical complexity of gene editing applications designed to impact wild species, such as CRISPR-edited mosquitos to prevent malaria transmission, genetic strategies to eliminate invasive species, or the use of CRISPR gene editing to promote species resiliency to changing climates. She builds deliberative platforms that engage diverse expertise, worldviews, and historically marginalized voices to foster effective public engagement, promote wise innovation, and inform sensible policy. Natalie worked in biomedical research where she actively used genetic technologies like CRISPR before founding Editing Nature to become a leading voice in CRISPR and synthetic biology ethics. She has authored numerous publications on the topic, served on expert panels, and contributes to UN mandated documents. Her work has been highlighted by Pacific Standard Magazine and National Geographic. Natalie served as a visiting scholar at the Hastings Center and collaborates with the Yale Program in Biomedical Ethics. She received her PhD in cellular, molecular, and medical biosciences and MS in human nutrition and metabolic studies from Columbia University and her BS in human anatomy and cell biology from McGill University.

Susan Kopp, a veterinarian, is professor emerita of the City University of New York (CUNY).  A past director of CUNY’s veterinary technology program, she is a recipient of the New York State Humane Association Award for Exemplary Veterinary Service and has lectured nationally on topics relating to veterinary technician education and ethics.  During prior clinical practice, she served as a veterinarian in the New York City animal shelter system, where her work involved related areas of veterinary public health and the human-animal bond. A past chair of the Animal Ethics study group, Dr. Kopp developed and taught the Center’s first interdisciplinary summer seminar in animal and veterinary ethics.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Virginia Tech and a doctor of veterinary medicine from Purdue University, with additional coursework in religious studies. Her research interests regard the interface between religion, animals, and the environment.  Dr. Kopp’s interdisciplinary, collaborative work has been published in the Journal of Moral Theology and America magazine. She is a part of the international EcoOne initiative.

Julius Landwirth served as Associate Director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics from 2002-2010.  His interest in applied clinical ethics was sparked by his early experience as co-director of a then unique multi-disciplinary clinic for children with multiple congenital malformations at Yale in the mid 1960’s. As Director of the Department of Pediatrics at Bridgeport Hospital  in the 1970’s (where he laid the foundation for the current Yale affiliation), he inaugurated a monthly hospital-wide session on medical ethics with Jay Katz.  Later on, while serving as Director of Pediatrics at Hartford Hospital and associate chair of the academic department at UConn, he founded, and for 15 years chaired, the hospital ethics committee. Following “retirement” in 1996 he worked in the international arena under contract with the Open Society Institute organizing public health education programs in the 15 countries of the former Soviet Union, taking the opportunity to open up exploration of previously taboo issues in health care ethics. While at the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, his areas of interest have been research ethics and public health ethics. As chair of the Public Health Ethics working group, he forged a collaboration with the Yale Center for Public Health Preparedness and the Connecticut Department of Public Health to assist in the development of guidelines for altered standards of care during public health emergencies. He also chaired a Disability Working Group for several years.

Joel Marks is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of New Haven. He has edited two books of philosophical psychology – The Ways of Desire: New Essays in Philosophical Psychology on the Concept of Wanting and (with Roger T. Ames) Emotions in Asian Thought: A Dialogue in Comparative Philosophy – and is the author Moral Moments: Very Short Essays on Ethics; Ought Implies Kant: A Reply to the Consequentialist Critique; Ethics without Morals; It’s Just a Feeling; Bad Faith: A Philosophical Memoir; and Hard Atheism and the Ethics of Desire. Marks’s main areas of scholarly interest are theoretical and applied ethics, most recently with special emphasis on animal ethics. Marks founded the Animal Ethics Study Group at the Center in 2008. He has also been giving increased attention to planetary defense against asteroids and comets and has served on NASA’s Small Bodies Assessment Group goals document update team for planetary defense.

Karen J. Maschke has a PhD in political science from Johns Hopkins University and an MA in bioethics from Case Western Reserve University.  Prior to her work in bioethics, she taught political science and criminal justice at Oakland University in Michigan and the University of Georgia.  Dr. Maschke has published in a variety of areas, including research ethics, legal and constitutional policy, and criminal justice. She has worked with physicians at Weill Cornell Medical College to develop research ethics capacity in Haiti and taught a research ethics course to graduate students at Quisqueya University in Port-au-Prince. She is a member of The Data Sharing and Intellectual Capital work space (DSIC) of the National Cancer Institute’s cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid  (caBIG™), which is developing policies and guidelines for researchers and institutional review boards regarding access controls to cancer research data.  She also works on an NIH-funded project that examines the legal, ethical, and social implications of using drug addiction genetic information in criminal justice settings and on a European Commission-funded project that will develop a platform to promote and support international dialogue on privacy and ethics of biometrics and personal detection technologies.
Click here for Karen Maschke’s Hastings Center page

Lisa Moses is a practicing veterinarian, the chair of the Animal Ethics Study Group at   Yale’s  Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and a research fellow at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics. She completed a fellowship in bioethics at the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics and received her veterinary degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She also holds a faculty fellow position at Cummings Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine Center for Animals and Public Policy. After completing an internship, residency and board certification in small animal internal medicine, Dr. Moses’ was a senior staff member in the Emergency and Critical Care Medicine Section for over a dozen years before founding the Pain and Palliative Care Service at the MSPCA-Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts.  The Pain and Palliative Care Service is a unique program that assesses and treats complex cases of pain in all companion animal species. The service also provides comprehensive palliative care for animals with long term chronic illness and end-of-life patients. In addition to her clinical practice, Dr. Moses conducts research on moral distress and ethical conflict in veterinary medicine. She established and runs an ethics consultation service and monthly animal ethics discussion group in addition to being a frequent lecturer in veterinary ethics to students, veterinary professionals and animal shelter personnel. She also provides ethics consultation to outside veterinary academic institutions, veterinary hospitals, zoological, and animal welfare organizations regarding issues such as euthanasia decision making, medical errors and use of pets in clinical research. Dr. Moses began her career as an animal welfare officer in a large animal shelter in rural Oregon, which shaped much of her interest in animal use and animal ethics. Her research interests include moral distress and ethical dilemmas in clinical veterinary practice, the ethics of advanced veterinary medicine and end of life care, and the ethics of using animals for human therapy and service.

Jennifer E. Miller, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Yale School of Medicine and Director of the Good Pharma Scorecard initiative, an index that ranks new drugs and pharmaceutical companies on their ethics and and patient-centricity performance. Dr. Miller’s research explores the ethics of healthcare innovation, particularly how drugs are researched, developed, marketed, priced and made accessible to patients domestically and globally. She also works on the ethics of big data in healthcare, including informed consent, data-sharing, and ownership concerns. Dr. Miller founded the nonprofit Bioethics International and is a member of The World Economic Forum, participating on their Futures Council, Biotechnology Council, and Personalized Medicine Council. Prior to joining Yale’s faculty, she was based at NYU School of Medicine, Duke University, and Harvard University. Her training is in physics, bioethics, business ethics, and regulatory governance. She is a graduate of Fordham College, and holds a PhD in Bioethics from the Pontifical University Regina Apostolorum, and has held ethics fellowships at Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics and Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics. Click here for Jennifer Miller’s page at Yale Medical School.

Erik Parens is a Senior Research Scholar at The Hastings Center.  He investigates how new technologies shape us and how emerging science shapes our self-understanding.  Currently he is the principal investigator on a project, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, which explores the controversies surrounding the use of psychotropic medications to treat emotional and behavioral disturbances in children.  He is also the principal investigator on a project, funded by The Dana Foundation, which investigates the difference between reasonable and unreasonable claims based on neuroimaging technologies (such as fMRI). He has lectured and published widely, and is the first or sole editor of four books: Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications; Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights; Wrestling with Behavioral Genetics: Science, Ethics and Public Conversation; and Surgically Shaping Children: Essays on Technology, Ethics, and the pursuit of Normality.  He has served as a consultant to several government and nongovernmental bodies, including the National Bioethics Advisory Commission and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He is also a visiting professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Sarah Lawrence College. Dr. Parens was educated at The University of Chicago, where he received his PhD (1988) and MA (1983) from the Committee on Social Thought, and his BA (1979) from the college.
Click here for Erik Parens’ Hastings Center page

Pasquale Patrizio is Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale School of Medicine and is the director of both the Yale Fertility Center and the Reproductive Endocrinology clinical practice.  Dr. Patrizio received his medical training at the Universita’ Studi Napoli Federico II, MD.  He completed his residency in ob/gyn-reproductive endocrinology at the Universita’ Studi Napoli Federico II, MD.  He went on to complete his residency in andrology-male reproduction at the Universita’ Studi in Pisa, Italy, and his residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California.  His fellowship, also at the University of California, was focused on reproductive endocrinology and infertility.  He received a MA in Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania under the mentorship of Arthur Caplan.  His clinical interests include infertility (female and male), IVF, egg donation and gestational surrogacy, and preservation of fertility in cancer patients.  Among his many research interests are whole ovary cryopreservation, egg freezing, genetics of oocytes, isolation and freezing of male germ cells and ethical issues in assisted reproduction.  Dr. Patrizio is Board Certified in OB/GYN and Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility and is an active participant in bioethical discussions both within the Yale School of Medicine and the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.
Click here for Pasquale Patrizio’s Yale School of Medicine page

Julie Rothstein Rosenbaum is Chief of Internal Medicine and Acute Care at Yale Health and an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine. In addition to seeing her own patients, she teaches residents in the Yale Primary Care Internal Medicine Residency. She directs the annual Workshop on Professional Responsibility for the medicine interns as well as the Program on Women in Medicine for the residency. She continues to teach ethics and professionalism topics, as well as health policy and advocacy. Dr Rosenbaum also co-directs the Yale Primary Care Residency Community Engagement Curriculum. She currently serves on the American College of Physicians Ethics, Professionalism, and Human Rights Committee and has also been appointed to the ACP Committee for the MKSAP 18 General Internal Medicine Revision. Dr. Rosenbaum has worked with the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation on a project evaluating the impact of the hidden curriculum on medical education, focusing on transitions between different care environments. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Office-based Medicine Curriculum, an ambulatory curriculum used in about 200 residencies across the U.S. She has also developed a career planning website for internal medicine residents called Beyond Residency. She received her undergraduate degree from Brown University and her medical degree from Yale School of Medicine.  She completed her residency at New York Hospital-Cornell and returned to Yale as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar.  Her areas of scholarly focus include end-of-life communication, appropriate relationships between physicians and the pharmaceutical industry, and exploration of factors that hinder and support ethical and professional behavior, including the “hidden curriculum.”  She has received grant support from the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation for a multicenter qualitative study exploring how transitions between different medical microsystems provide insights into varied moral environments.  Julie served for years on the Waterbury Hospital Ethics Committee. She has also published in several peer-reviewed journals, and presented at regional and national meetings.   Her essay on personal-professional balance entitled “Duality,” published in Health Affairs, was selected for inclusion in the first of its kind anthology, Best American Medical Writing 2009.
Click here for Julie Rosenbaum’s Yale School of Medicine page

Lois Sadler is an Associate Professor at the Yale School of Nursing and the Yale Child Study Center.  She practices as a pediatric nurse practitioner and teaches masters and doctoral nursing students in the areas of family studies, child development, pediatric health promotion, research, and adolescent primary care.  Dr. Sadler received her B.S. degree from the University of Massachusetts, her M.S.N. degree from Yale University School of Nursing, and her Ph.D. from the School of Family Studies at the University of Connecticut.  Her research is in the area of the transition to parenthood among urban adolescent mothers and their families, adolescent pregnancy prevention, and evaluation of specialized support programs for adolescent parents.  Her publications and presentations are in the area of adolescent primary health care issues, high-risk families and adolescent parenthood.  Dr. Sadler has worked clinically with teen parents in New Haven since 1979 and currently teaches parent education classes to middle school and high school student-parents enrolled in the Polly T. McCabe Center in New Haven.  Her current research includes studies with teen mothers and a pilot study with colleagues at the Yale Child Study Center and the Fair Haven Community Health Center of a home visitation program, “Minding the Baby,” for high risk young families.
Click here for Lois Sadler’s Yale School of Nursing page

 Roberto Sirvent is an Affiliate Scholar at Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, where he directs the “Race, Bioethics, and Public Health” project. He has also lectured and taught seminars at Yale’s Sherwin B. Nuland Summer Institute in Bioethics since 2014. Roberto is currently Chair of the Social Science Department and Professor of Political and Social Ethics at Hope International University in Fullerton, CA. He has taught at Pomona College and Claremont School of Theology, and has also held appointments as a Visiting Scholar at Yale University, the Hastings Center, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the University of Copenhagen. His courses taught at both the undergraduate and graduate level include: “Slavery and its Afterlives,” Ethics and the Decolonial Imagination,” “Justice, Liberation, and Mutual Aid,” “Biomedical Ethics,” and “Race, Sexuality, and the U.S. Prison Regime.” In addition to his teaching, Roberto maintains an active research agenda. He is the author of the book, Embracing Vulnerability: Human and Divine, and co-author of the book, American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News—From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror. He is currently working on two book projects. The first, Bioethics and Black Suffering, draws on the work of Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Hortense Spillers, Assata Shakur, Saidiya Hartman, Joy James, Christina Sharpe, Sylvia Wynter, and Denise Ferreira da Silva to explore how theories of refusal, abolition, and mutual aid can inform debates in the medical humanities and environmental justice. His second book project, based off an undergraduate seminar he designed of the same name, is tentatively called, The Cultural Politics of Dinosaurs: Race, Capitalism, and the End of the World. Roberto is currently Associate Editor of the journal Political Theology and Contributing Editor of the Black Agenda Report. He has previously served as guest editor of the Journal of Disability and the Global South and the American Philosophical Association’s Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy, as well as managing editor of Perspectivas: The Journal of the Hispanic Theological Initiative.  Roberto earned an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University, a J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law, and a Ph.D. from the London School of Theology.

Wendell Wallach is a lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.  The question that pervades Mr. Wallach’s work at the Center is:  how will we navigate the promise, perils, and bioethical challenges posed by new technologies?  While much of the discussion regarding the manner in which technological enhancements will transform human identity and community is highly speculative, we are beset by a host of ethical dilemmas arising from the technologies we already have.  New technologies not only afford new possibilities as to what we might become, but also facilitate research into who we are and how each of us functions.  His work over the past few years has focused on the manner in which the “Information Age” and cognitive science are transforming our understanding of human decision-making and ethics.  A radically new vision of human nature is emerging that challenges traditional beliefs systems and the laws and institutions built around those beliefs.  A book that he is currently writing, Cybersoul: Moral Intelligence in the Information Age, explores this subject.  He has also been active in developing the new field of inquiry known as Machine Ethics, Machine Morality, or Artificial Morality, which explores the prospects for developing artificial agents capable of making moral decisions.  The field looks at both the possibility of implementing morality in software agents and artificial entities, and what we will learn about human ethics and decision-making as we go through this exercise.  He is co-author of Machine Morality: From Aristotle to Asimov and Beyond, which will be published by MIT Press.  In addition to chairing the Center for Bioethics working research group on “Technology and Ethics,” he is a recognized leader in the new field of Machine Ethics for which he was first to design a course.  He has taught the course twice at Yale.