Alan Regenberg, MBE
Alan is also engaged in a broad range of research projects and programs, including the Berman Institute’s science programs: the Stem Cell Policy and Ethics (SCOPE) Program; the Program in Ethics and Brain Sciences (PEBS-Neuroethics); and the Hinxton Group, an international consortium on stem cells, ethics and law; and the eSchool+ Initiative. Recent research has focused on using deliberative democracy tools to engage with communities about their values for allocating scarce medical resources like ventilators in disasters like pandemics. Additional recent work has focused on ethical challenges related to gene editing, stem cell research, social media, public engagement, vaccines, and neuroethics. (Publications)
Joseph Ali, JD
Yoram Unguru, MD, MS, MA
Full Bio
Dr. Unguru is a pediatric hematologist/oncologist with joint faculty appointments at The Herman and Walter Samuelson Children’s Hospital at Sinai and The John Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, where he is a Core Faculty member. He is also Associate Professor in the School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University. His B.A. in historical studies and M.A. with a concentration in the history of medicine and medical ethics were granted at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Dr. Unguru also received a Master of Science (valedictorian) in interdisciplinary studies in biological and physical science at Touro College / Barry Z. Levine School of Health Sciences. He earned his M.D. (valedictorian) at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology / Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine. He completed his pediatric residency at the Children’s Hospital at Sinai and his pediatric hematology/oncology fellowship at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington DC. Dr. Unguru was a postdoctoral Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics and Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Unguru is board certified both in pediatrics and in pediatric hematology/oncology.
Dr. Unguru’s research interests include clinical and research ethics. His scholarship and publications have focused on the role of children and providers in facilitating shared decision-making, end-of-life decision-making, allocation of scarce lifesaving medications, and ethics education. Dr. Unguru has served as a consultant to the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Pediatric Research, the American Medical Association Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, the Food Drug and Administration, and the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He is on the Editorial Board of Pediatric Ethicscope and serves as a peer reviewer for leading academic medical journals. Dr. Unguru is Chair of the Children’s Oncology Group, Bioethics Steering Committee and past member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Ethics Committee.
Dr. Unguru is the Chairman of the Ethics Committee at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore where he implemented and directs a clinical ethics curriculum for the pediatric house staff at The Herman and Walter Samuelson Children’s Hospital at Sinai. He is past recipient of “Teacher of the Year” as chosen by the pediatric house staff at The Herman and Walter Samuelson Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Unguru leads a multidisciplinary, transnational working group examining the ethical and policy implications of chemotherapy shortages in childhood cancer and is a member of the Maryland health system consortium tasked with operationalizing scarce resource allocation processes for public health catastrophes, including the COVID-19 pandemic.
Select Media Appearances
- New York Times, “Drug Shortages Forcing Hard Decisions on Rationing Treatments” (Jan. 29, 2016)
- NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, “Shortages of Children’s Cancer Drugs and How to Allocate Them” (Feb. 1, 2016)
- MSNBC, “Colorado governor signs nation’s first ‘Right to Try’ law” (May 18, 2014)
Nancy E. Kass, ScD
Dr. Kass is coeditor (with Ruth Faden) of HIV, AIDS and Childbearing: Public Policy, Private Lives (Oxford University Press, 1996).
She has served as consultant to the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and to the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Kass currently serves as the Chair of the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative Central IRB; she previously co-chaired the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Committee to develop Recommendations for Informed Consent Documents for Cancer Clinical Trials and served on the NCI’s central IRB. Current research projects examine improving informed consent in human research, ethical guidance development for Ebola and other infectious outbreaks, and ethics and learning health care. Dr. Kass teaches the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s course on U.S. and International Research Ethics and Integrity, she served as the director of the School’s PhD program in bioethics and health policy from its inception until 2016, and she has directed (with Adnan Hyder) the Johns Hopkins Fogarty African Bioethics Training Program since its inception in 2000. Dr. Kass is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine) and an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center.
Jeremy Sugarman, MD, MPH, MA
He was the founding director of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and History of Medicine at Duke University where he was also a professor of medicine and philosophy. He was appointed as an Academic Icon at the University of Malaya and is a faculty affiliate of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.
Dr. Sugarman was the longstanding chair of the Ethics Working Group of the HIV Prevention Trials Network. He is currently a member of the Scientific and Research Advisory Board for the Canadian Blood Service and the Ethics and Public Policy Committees of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. He co-leads the Ethics and Regulatory Core of the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory and is co-chair of the Johns Hopkins’ Institutional Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee.
Dr. Sugarman has been elected as a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, and the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine). He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American College of Physicians and the Hastings Center. He also received a Doctor of Science, honoris causa, from New York Medical College.
Ruth R. Faden, PhD, MPH
Ruth R. Faden, PhD, MPH, is the founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. She was the Berman Institute’s Director from 1995 until 2016, and the inaugural Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director (2014-2016). Dr. Faden was, and is currently, the inaugural Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics. In the twenty years in which Dr. Faden led the Berman Institute, she transformed what was an informal interest group of faculty across Johns Hopkins into a one of the world’s premier bioethics programs with over 35 faculty, 30 staff and over 100 alumni. Under her direction, the Berman Institute became a universitywide unit of Johns Hopkins with its own building, reporting to the Provost. Dr. Faden also secured a significant endowment for the Berman Institute, including six endowed professorships and an endowed directorship.
Dr. Faden is a leading scholar in the field of bioethics. She is the author and editor of numerous books and many articles on biomedical ethics and public policy, including most significantly Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy (with Madison Powers), A History and Theory of Informed Consent (with Tom L. Beauchamp), Structural Injustice: Power, Advantage, and Human Rights (with Madison Powers; forthcoming, Oxford University Press).
Dr. Faden’s current research focuses on structural justice theory, and on national and global challenges in food and agriculture, learning health care systems, health systems design and priority setting, and access to the benefits of global investments in biomedical research. Dr. Faden also works on ethical challenges in biomedical science, with a particular focus on women’s health and the rights and interests of pregnant women.
Dr. Faden is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a Fellow of the Hastings Center and the American Psychological Association. She has served on numerous national advisory committees and commissions, including President William Clinton’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, which she chaired. Dr. Faden colaunched the Global Food Ethics and Policy Program, sponsor of the 7 by 5 Agenda for Ethics and Global Food Security. She is also a cofounder of the Hinxton Group, a global community committed to advancing ethical and policy challenges in stem cell science, and the Second Wave initiative, an effort to ensure that the health interests of pregnant women are fairly represented in biomedical research and drug and device policies.
In 2011, Dr. Faden was the recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards from the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) and Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIMR).