Seminar Series: Ethical and Practical Approaches to Drug Shortages by Andrew G. Shuman, MD, FACS, HEC-C
615 N. Wolfe Street
Baltimore, MD
Every year in the United States, hundreds of shortages of life-saving, essential drugs impact patients and health care workers. This seminar will describe drug shortages to help us understand why they occur, introduce the ethical tenets inherent to managing drug shortages, and apply these principles to prevention and mitigation approaches including at the national policy level.
Andrew G. Shuman, MD, FACS, HEC-C, is an associate professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Michigan Medical School. He serves as chief of the clinical ethics service in the Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine (CBSSM).
Dr. Shuman is the assistant dean for veterans affairs, and the associate chief of staff-education at the VA Ann Arbor Health System, where he directs the educational experience for a diverse cadre of pre- and post-doctoral trainees and learners.
Dr. Shuman is recognized as a thought leader in ethical issues arising within the field of otolaryngology and surgical oncology. His work involves defining the conceptual dimensions of “surgical ethics,” applying his perspective as a practicing surgeon and clinical ethicist to normative and empirical bioethics research. He received extramural research funding for his work from NIH, the VA and societal grants, and has a portfolio of publications in leading journals in the fields of ethics, oncology and otolaryngology including The New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA.
He has acted as PI on projects focused on cancer treatment decision-making, precision oncology and drug shortages, tailored to directly inform both the clinical practice and legal regulation of these ethically contentious and clinically complex disciplines. He was closely involved in Michigan Medicine and the VA’s pandemic response, as well as at the state and national level on the ethics of scarce resource allocation including testifying in front of the United States Senate.
Dr. Shuman completed fellowships in head and neck surgical oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and in medical ethics at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He completed his residency in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Michigan. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School, and also graduated from the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts.