Baruch A. Brody (21 April 1943 – 30 May 2018) was an American

bioethicist Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health (primarily focused on the human, but also increasingly includes animal ethics), including those emerging from advances in biology, med ...

. He was the Leon Jaworski Professor of biomedical ethics and former Director of the Center for Ethics, Medicine and Public Issues at The

Baylor College of Medicine Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) is a medical school and research center in Houston, Texas, within the Texas Medical Center, the world's largest medical center. BCM is composed of four academic components: the School of Medicine, the Graduate S ...

and Andrew Mellow professor of Humanities in the Department of Philosophy at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...

Education and career

Brody received his B.A. from

Brooklyn College , mottoeng = Nothing without great effort , established = , parent = CUNY , type = Public university , endowment = $98.0 million (2019) , budget = $123.96 m ...

in 1962 and his Ph.D. from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in 1967. He joined the

philosophy department in 1975, and retired in 2018. He was elected to the

National Academy of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Eng ...

in 2001 and was a fellow of the

Hastings Center The Hastings Center is an independent, nonpartisan bioethics research institute and think tank based in Garrison, New York. It was instrumental in establishing the field of bioethics and is among the most prestigious bioethics and health policy i ...

Philosophical work

Brody was among the first scholars in the field of

applied ethics Applied ethics refers to the practical aspect of moral considerations. It is ethics with respect to real-world actions and their moral considerations in the areas of private and public life, the professions, health, technology, law, and leadersh ...

to write about abortion in the era following

Roe v. Wade ''Roe v. Wade'', 410 U.S. 113 (1973),. was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States conferred the right to have an abortion. The decision struck down many federal and st ...

, including four articles in four different journals, culminating in his 1975 book ''Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life: A Philosophical View''. He has been noted for his contributions to

Jewish ethics Jewish ethics is the ethics of the Jewish religion or the Jewish people. A type of normative ethics, Jewish ethics may involve issues in Jewish law as well as non-legal issues, and may involve the convergence of Judaism and the Western philosop ...

, as one of a number of "professional bioethicists with medical training" who uses "Judaic resources and reasoning to illustrate and augment their arguments."

Selected publications

* ''Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life: A Philosophical View''. (MIT Press, 1975). * ''Identity and Essence'' (Princeton, 1980). * ''Life and Death Decision Making'' (Oxford University Press, 1987). * ''Ethical Issues in Drug Testing Approval and Pricing'' (Oxford University Press, 1994) * ''The Ethics of Biomedical Research'' (Oxford University Press, 1998) * ''Taking Issue'' (Georgetown, 2005)

References

1943 births 2018 deaths Bioethicists Brooklyn College alumni Princeton University alumni Rice University faculty Baylor University faculty Hastings Center Fellows American people of Jewish descent Jewish ethicists Members of the National Academy of Medicine {{academic-bio-stub