2010-paul-ramsey-award-winner-kass

October 28, 2009 – San Ramon, CA

The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network is pleased to announce that Dr. Leon R. Kass has been selected to receive the 2010 Paul Ramsey Award, given to those who have demonstrated exemplary achievement in the field of bioethics. Kass, the Addie Clark Harding Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the College at the University of Chicago, is a pioneer in bioethics who has, in the spirit of Paul Ramsey, made significant contributions toward a proper understanding of the challenges we face in bioethics, to defend the dignity of human life and advance ethical biotechnology. From 2001 to 2005 he served as the chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics and has been writing and thinking about the ethical and philosophical issues raised by biomedical advances for more than thirty years.

Dr. William Hurlbut, who serves on the Paul Ramsey nominating committee said, “Leon Kass is an extraordinarily constructive and courageous voice in bioethics–a treasure to our civilization. He is the intellectual epicenter of American bioethics.”

Paul Ramsey is regarded by many as one of the most important ethicists of the twentieth century. He was a distinguished writer on bioethics and served as Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. His commitment to the sanctity and dignity of human life was paramount to his work.

Gilbert Meilaender, Ph.D., in his address last year as recipient of the 2009 Paul Ramsey Award said, “We’ve heard a lot about the relation of science and ethics in recent months. A great deal of it confused, and one would have liked to see the Ramsey scalpel go to work on it. One point he would have surely have made – for he made it in different contexts on several occasions. It’s a point about what it means to be morally serious.”

For more information: Robyn Klein, robyn.klein@cbc-network.org, 510-504-5123.

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