Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD

Jonathan D. Moreno is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania.

Moreno is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a fellow of the Hastings Center, a member of the Philadelphia College of Physicians, a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, a faculty affiliate of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, and a member of the Committee on Human Rights of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.

Moreno was an Andrew W. Mellon post-doctoral fellow, holds an honorary doctorate from Hofstra University, and is a recipient of the College of William and Mary Law School Benjamin Rush Medal, the Dr. Jean Mayer Award for Global Citizenship from Tufts University, and the Penn Alumni Faculty Award of Merit. He has held the honorary Visiting Professorship in History at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. In 2018 the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

He has been a staff member or advisor to many governmental and non-governmental organizations, including three U.S. presidential commissions, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee. Moreno is a member of the Bayer Bioethics Council and the Hevolution Foundation Global Ethics Committee, and an advisor at the Center for Health, Ethics and Society at the University of Hamburg, Germany.  His work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Greenwall Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the U.S. Department of Defense.  He was named an official “Mad Scientist” by the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command.

In 2025 MIT Press will publish his new book, Absolutely Essential: Bioethics and the Rules-Based International Order. Among Moreno’s previous books are Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die, co-authored with Amy Gutmann, formerly Penn president and U.S. Ambassador to Germany; The Body Politic, which was named a Best Book of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews; Undue Risk, nominated for the Virginia Literary Award; and Mind Wars, which formed part of the basis of the film The Bourne Legacy.

Moreno has published more than a thousand papers, articles, reviews and op-eds and has been translated into several languages.  His writings have appeared in many venues, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Science, Nature, Slate, Politico, The Hill and Foreign Affairs. He was co-host of Making the Call, an Endeavor Content podcast, and was a columnist for ABCNews.com. As a senior fellow at the Center for American he edited the online magazine Science Progress. In 2008-09 Moreno served on President Barack Obama’s transition team.

The American Journal of Bioethics has called him “the quietly most interesting bioethicist of our time.”