KINGSTON, R.I. — Nov. 4, 2019 — As part of this year’s ‘Religion in America’ Honors Colloquium, Dr. Jeremy Sugarman will visit the University of Rhode Island to share his thoughts on the inevitable tangling of religion and medicine, and the ethical issues that arise when religious and secular values collide. He will also discuss the emergence of secular bioethics, and spend time analyzing a real-world example.

The lecture, “Ethical Controversies in Medicine and Medical Research: The Interplay of Secular Bioethics and Religion,” will take place Tuesday, Nov. 12, at 7 p.m. in Edwards Hall, 64 Upper College Road, on the Kingston Campus. This event will not be livestreamed, nor will it be archived. It is free and open to the public.

Sugarman is an internationally recognized leader in the field of biomedical ethics, and has particular expertise in applying empirical methods and evidence-based standards to evaluate and analyze bioethical issues. He is the Harvey M. Meyerhoff Professor of Bioethics and Medicine, professor of medicine, professor of Health Policy and Management, and deputy director for medicine of the Berman Institute of Bioethics at the Johns Hopkins University.

In the past, Sugarman has researched and made contributions to medical ethics and policy, including but not limited to his work on the ethics of informed consent, umbilical cord blood banking, stem cell research, international HIV prevention research and global health and research oversight. Sugarman is the author of more than 300 articles, reviews and book chapters.

Dr. Sugarman consults and speaks internationally on a range of issues related to bioethics. He served as senior policy and research analyst for the White House Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, consultant to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and Senior Advisor to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. He also served on the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission. Sugarman is 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 is co-chair of the Johns Hopkins’ Institutional Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee. In addition, he is chair of the Ethics Working Group of the HIV Prevention Trials Network and co-leads the Ethics and Regulatory Core of the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory.

Dr. Sugarman has been elected as a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and 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.

Lauren Poirier, an intern in the Marketing and Communications Department at URI and public relations and English major, wrote this press release.