Daniel I. Wikler, PhD

Daniel I. Wikler, PhD

Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Ethics and Population Health,
T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University

Daniel I. Wikler, PhD, is the Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Ethics and Population Health in the Department of Global Health and Population at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. His early research projects and publications addressed many issues in bioethics, including reproduction, transplantation, and end-of-life decision-making. Later work focused on measuring global health disparities, ethical issues in population and international health, the allocation of global health resources, and dilemmas in public health practice, including the ethical dimensions of global tobacco control policy.

Read a summary

Wikler recounts his upbringing in Lexington, Kentucky on the grounds of the U.S. Narcotic Farm (later known as the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital), where his psychiatrist father worked. He described his education at Oberlin College and his graduate work in philosophy at the University of California Los Angeles. While at UCLA, he described a medical school symposium regarding the treatment of children with spina bifida as shaping his initial interest in bioethics. Wikler describes joining the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s medical ethics program and his tenure there. He discussed his time during the Carter administration when he served as Staff Philosopher for the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research.

Prof. Wikler describes his visits to China, his growing interest in global bioethics, and how he came to be the co-founder of the International Association of Bioethics. He recounts his position as the first staff ethicist for the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland and his involvement with the Global Burden of Disease Studies. Wikler discussed his move to Harvard and the establishment of the Harvard Program in Ethics and Health. The interview concludes with a discussion of the ethical challenges in public health and the importance of addressing global health disparities.

You can find full audio, transcript, and other materials in the Moral Histories Archive 

Johns Hopkins University holds all rights, title, and interests to these records, including copyright and literary rights. The records are made available for research use. Any user seeking to publish part or all of a record in this collection must seek permission from theFerdinand Hamburger University Archives, Sheridan Libraries.