John & Marsha Ryan Bioethicist- in- Residence
The John and Marsha Ryan Bioethicist in Residence was established in 2006 to fund an annual residence and lecture by a law and/or medicine ethics scholar at the School of Law and School of Medicine at Southern Illinois University.
Each year a leading bioethics scholar will visit classes at the law school and provide a seminar for medical students in Carbondale and Springfield; organize interdisciplinary educational activities for students, residents, and faculty from both institutions; be available to mentor law and medicine students; offer a public lecture on his or her scholarship as it relates to law and medicine; and be invited to submit a written version of this lecture for publication in the Journal of Legal Medicine.
2013 Ryan Bioethicist
Kevin FitzGerald, SJ, PhD
March 20, 2013
Kevin FitzGerald, S.J., Ph.D., is the Dr. David Lauler Chair of Catholic Health Care Ethics in the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Oncology at the Georgetown University Medical Center. He received a Ph.D. in molecular genetics, and a Ph.D. in bioethics, from Georgetown University. His research efforts focus on the investigation of abnormal gene expression in cancer, and on ethical issues in biomedical research. He has published both scientific and ethical articles in peer-reviewed journals, books, and in the popular press.
Father FitzGerald has given presentations nationally and internationally, and often been interviewed by the news media, on such topics as human genomic research, cloning, stem cell research, and personalized medicine. He is a founding member of Do No Harm, a member of the ethics committee for the March of Dimes, and a member of the Stem Cell Research Commission for the State of Maryland. In addition, he served until March 2009 as a member of the DHHS Secretary's Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society.