Albert R. Jonsen - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_R.

_Jonsen

Albert R. Jonsen
Albert R. Jonsen (April 1931 – October 21, 2020) was one of the founders of the field of
Bioethics. He was Emeritus Professor of Ethics in Medicine at the University of Washington,
School of Medicine, where he was Chairman of the Department of Medical History and Ethics
from 1987-1999. After retiring from UW, he returned to San Francisco where he co-founded
(with Dr. William Andereck) the Program in Medicine and Human Values at Sutter Health's
California Pacific Medical Center in 2003.

Contents
Career
Bibliography
References
External links

Career
Jonsen was born in April 1931 in San Francisco. He joined the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1949
and was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1962; he resigned from the active priesthood in
1976. He received a doctorate in religious studies from Yale University in 1967. In 1969, he was
chosen as president of the University of San Francisco where he served until 1972. The medical
school of the University of California, San Francisco invited him to join the faculty and create a
program in medical ethics.

Jonsen was one of the first bioethicists to be appointed to a medical faculty. The National Heart,
Lung and Blood Institute selected him as a member of the first NIH committee to deal with
ethical, social and legal issues of a developing medical technology, the totally implantable
artificial heart (1972–73). The U.S. Congress established the National Commission for the
Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1974–78), charged with
formulating regulations governing the use of humans in research. Jonsen was a Commissioner
and participated in development of regulations regarding use of the human fetus, children and
mentally incapacitated persons as research subjects; he also assisted in the writing of the
Belmont Report, the statement of ethical principles that has become the leading statement on
research ethics. In 1979, Jonsen was appointed to the successor body, the President's
Commission on the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine (1979–82) which devised reports on
brain death, foregoing life-support, informed consent and other topics that have become the
main subjects of bioethics.

Jonsen was a pioneer in the practice of "clinical ethics", in which an ethicist serves as a
consultant to those making ethical decisions about appropriate care of patients. Jonsen
authored with Mark Siegler and William Winslade 'Clinical Ethics: A Practical Approach to
Ethical Decisions in Clinical Medicine', a seminal book that provides a unique structured
approach to solving ethical issues that arise in daily clinical practice. This book is currently in its
8th edition.

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Jonsen joined John Fletcher as founders of the Society for Clinical Ethics (SBC), which later
merged with the Society for Health and Human Values (SHHV) and the American Association
of Bioethics (AAB) to form the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) in 1998.
In 1987, Jonsen assumed the chairmanship of the Department of Medical History and Ethics,
School of Medicine, University of Washington. He remained there until his retirement in 1999.
After his retirement from UW, Jonsen returned to his native San Francisco, where he joined his
good friend and colleague, Dr. William Andereck in co-founding The Program in Medicine and
Human Values at Sutter Health's California Pacific Medical Center in 2003. At Sutter Health's
Bioethics Program, he continued his scholarly work and conducted multiple research studies
and authored several books and papers. He also mentored Bioethicists and Clinical Ethics
Fellows during this time. Jonsen was working on the completion of the 9th edition of his book,
Clinical Ethics, at the time of his death.

Jonsen is a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution. He has
served on the National Board of Medical Examiners, the American Board of Medical Specialties,
the ethics committee of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and as consultant
to the American Board of Internal Medicine. He was president of the Society for Health and
Human Values and chair of the Committee to Monitor the Social Impact of AIDS of the National
Academy of Sciences. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences
in 1981. In 2017, The Hastings Center granted Jonsen the most prestigious honor in the field of
bioethics, the Henry Knowles Beecher Award for Contributions to Ethics and the Life
Sciences.[1]

Jonsen died on October 21, 2020 at the age of 89.[2]

Bibliography
The Ethics of Neonatal Intensive Care (1976)
Clinical Ethics (1982) (with Mark Siegler and William Winslade)
The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (1988) (with Stephen Toulmin)
The Birth of Bioethics (1998)
A Short History of Medical Ethics (2000)
Bioethics Beyond the Headlines: Who Lives? Who Dies? Who Decides? (2005)

References
1. @hastingscenter (19 October 2017). "Congratulations to Albert Jonsen & Edward Frank
Shotter, 2017 Hastings Center Henry Knowles Beecher Award recipients" (https://twitter.com
/hastingscenter/status/921087735586271232) (Tweet) – via Twitter.
2. "Albert Jonsen, bioethics pioneer and former UW chair, dies" (https://newsroom.uw.edu/post
script/albert-jonsen-bioethics-pioneer-and-former-uw-chair-dies). University of Washington.
2 November 2020. Retrieved 7 November 2020.

External links
[1] (https://www.sutterhealth.org/services/bioethics/bioethics-team) Sutter Health's Program
in Medicine and Human Values.
University of Washington Bio entry (https://web.archive.org/web/20070209004841/http://dep
ts.washington.edu/mhedept/facres/aj_bio.html)
Albert Rupert Jonsen Papers (MS 1757). (http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ms.1757)

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Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

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