Section of Medical Ethics

In the Section of Medical Ethics, part of NYU Langone Health’s Division of Healthcare Delivery Science within the Department of Population Health, we work to ensure that patients are treated justly and humanely by addressing the moral and practical issues in all aspects of healthcare and biotechnology. The section was founded as the Division of Medical Ethics by bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, in 2012. We aim to influence policy, foster careers in bioethics, and educate the wider community about ethical issues in healthcare through research and scholarship.

In our research, we study a variety of bioethics issues: ethical treatment of patients, access to investigational medical products, clinical trial design, vaccine ethics and policy, transplant ethics, reproductive ethics, gender and sexuality ethics, research ethics and integrity, end-of-life care and physician-assisted death, and scarce-resource rationing. We frequently share our findings and expertise with the media to advance the general public’s knowledge of medical ethics.

We provide medical ethics education in curricula at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and NYU College of Global Public Health and through our High School Bioethics program.

We offer educational opportunities for scholars at all stages of their medical ethics careers, through a visiting scholar program and internships for high school and college students.