School launches new program in biomedical ethics

The School of Medicine is launching a new Program for Biomedical Ethics, which will be directed by Mark R. Mercurio, M.D., M.A., associate professor of pediatrics.

Biomedical ethics is a subject of great interest to students and of increasing importance to medicine, as technological advances and other influences on health care add complexity to the decision making of physicians and their colleagues.

The new program will coordinate and augment the educational and other scholarly work in biomedical ethics at the medical school, and create international visibility for work in biomedical ethics at Yale through publications, working groups, and other initiatives. The program will provide support to medical students pursuing research in biomedical ethics for their thesis work, and will also assist students in graduate school and postdoctoral training programs.

Mercurio, an associate director of Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, received his M.D. from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1982 and trained at Yale as a resident and fellow. An accomplished neonatologist, he received his master’s degree in philosophy from Brown University in 2004 and has for many years taught medical ethics to Yale residents, fellows, and medical students.