Bio

Laurie Zoloth recently moved to the Chicago area where she is Professor of Medical Ethics and Humanities at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. Most recently Dr. Zoloth was Professor of Social Ethics and Director of the Program in Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University, and in 2000-2001 was President of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. She is a member of NASA's National Advisory Board, as well as on NASA's Planetary Protection Advisory Committee and NASA's National Animal Care and Use Committee. She is also a member of NIH's National AIDS DSMB for Clinical Trials and NIH's National ELSI Planning Committee for 2002. She served The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities as a member of the National Board of Directors for 5 years, is now a member of the Standing Committee on the Status of the Profession. She is a member of the Board of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. She is the co-founder of The Ethics Practice, a group that has provided bioethics consultation and education services to health care providers and health care systems nationally, including the Kaiser Permanente System, five Bay Area medical centers, and regional long-term care networks. She received her BA in Women's Studies and History from the University of California at Berkeley, her BSN from the University of the State of New York, her MA in English from San Francisco State University, her MA in Jewish Studies and her Ph.D. in Social Ethics at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Dr. Zoloth has worked as a LVN and then a staff RN for 20 years in the fields of obstetrics and neonatal intensive care. She has taught, done research and published extensively in the areas of ethics, family, feminist theory, Jewish Studies and social policy in The Journal of Clinical Ethics, Theoretical Medicine, The Hastings Center Report, HEC Forum, Medical Humanities Review, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, and Tikkun Magazine, and has authored chapters in 18 books. Her book The Ethics of Encounter, on justice, health policy, the Oregon health care reforms, and the ethics of community was published in the fall of 1999: She is also co-editor of three other books, Notes From a Narrow Ridge: Religion and Bioethics, with Dena Davis; Riding on Faith: Religion, Popular Culture and the World of Disney, with Simon Harak, and Margin of Error: the Necessity, Inevitability and Ethics of Mistakes in Medicine and Bioethics Consultation, with Susan Rubin. In 2000, she was awarded a NIH ELSI (“Ethical Legal and Social Issues of the Human Genome) Grant to explore the ethical issues after the mapping of the human genome.