Announcing the 2014 Paul Ramsey Award Recipient

December 11, 2013, Pleasant Hill, CA — The Center for Bioethics and Culture and the Paul Ramsey Award Nominating Committee are pleased to announce Daniel P. Sulmasy, M.D., Ph.D., as the recipient of the 2014 Paul Ramsey Award for Excellence in Bioethics.

Dr. Sulmasy is the Kilbride-Clinton Professor of Medicine and Ethics in the Department of Medicine and Divinity School at the University of Chicago, where he serves as Associate Director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics.

CBC’s Paul Ramsey Institute Scholar William Hurlbut, M.D. said, “Dr. Sulmasy is a physician who exemplifies the best of medical tradition: conscience, competence, and compassion.”

Gilbert Meilaender, Ph.D., also a Paul Ramsey Institute Scholar, added:

Daniel Sulmasy is physician, philosopher, and theologian. But these are not so much separate roles he occupies as they are aspects that interpenetrate and enrich his thinking and his writing. It is our good fortune to profit from his unusual mix of training and expertise.

Dr. Sulmasy previously held faculty positions at New York Medical College and at Georgetown University. He received his A.B. and M.D. degrees from Cornell University and completed his residency, chief residency, and post-doctoral fellowship in General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Georgetown University in 1995. He has served on numerous governmental advisory committees, and was appointed to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues by President Obama in April, 2010.

His research interests encompass both theoretical and empirical investigations of the ethics of end-of-life decision-making, ethics education, and spirituality in medicine. He is the author of four books: The Healer’s Calling (1997), Methods in Medical Ethics (2001; 2nd ed. 2010), The Rebirth of the Clinic (2006), and A Balm for Gilead (2006). He serves as editor-in-chief of the journal, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. His numerous articles have appeared in medical, philosophical, and theological journals and he has lectured widely both in the U.S. and abroad.

The Paul Ramsey Award Dinner will be held Saturday, March 22, 2014
at the Diablo Country Club in Diablo, CA. Please save the date!

Who was Paul Ramsey?

Paul Ramsey is regarded by many as one of the most important ethicists of the twentieth century. He was a distinguished writer on bioethics a generation ago, and served as Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion, Princeton University. Ramsey shines as an almost lone beacon in the general darkness of academic bioethics, since his commitment to the sanctity and dignity of human life was paramount.

About The Paul Ramsey Award

The Paul Ramsey Award honors those who have made an outstanding contribution to the bioethics discussion and are actively engaged in society; facing the challenges of the 21st century, profoundly defending the dignity of humankind, and enthusiastically embracing ethical biotechnology for the human good. The Ramsey Award is given to those who have demonstrated exemplary achievement in the field of bioethics.