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Division of Medical Ethics
Over the past few years the Division of Medical Ethics has grown dramatically, foremost because of the addition of two new faculty members. Joseph J. Fins, M.D., F.A.C.P., Chief of the Division and Professor of Medicine, Professor of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine in Psychiatry, was pleased to welcome Elizabeth Nilson, M.D., M.P.H., Assistant Professor of Public Health and Assistant Professor of Medicine, and Inmaculada de Melo-Martín, Ph.D., M.S., Associate Professor of Public Health. Both have considerable and varied backgrounds in medical ethics. Their work furthers the Division’s mission to discover how to provide the most ethical care to patients and research subjects, to share this knowledge with current and future physicians and researchers through medical education, and to create standards of ethical care. One of Dr. Nilson’s major responsibilities is to assist with ethics consultations at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Cornell Medical Center. In this role she works with Dr. Fins, who is Chair of the Ethics Committee and Director of Medical Ethics at the Hospital. Since its inception, the Ethics Consultation Service has helped a greatly increasing number of patients to make complex and difficult decisions. In collaboration with the Patient Services Administration, currently it works with about 200 patients a year and is one of the busiest ethics consultation services in the country. Dr. Nilson is developing a widely usable high-quality tool for evaluating ethics consultations, in order to help standardize the process and make it more precise. She is also bringing her experience and knowledge to the medical school classes that she teaches. Dr. de Melo-Martín, a philosopher with an additional master’s degree in molecular biology, was recruited by the Division to assist with research ethics and teaching. Her main role is to evaluate the ethical components of proposed clinical research trials and to help researchers design coherent, ethical studies. Because of her training, she is especially interested in research involving reproduction, including in vitro fertilization; and genetics, including genetic testing and gene transfer. As a member and recently elected Vice Chair of the Institutional Review Board (IRB), Dr. de Melo-Martín reviews protocols and also reaches out to researchers to explore potential problems in protocols under development. She has been an active teacher in the ethics curriculum at Weill Cornell and will also be a member of a new committee to evaluate proposals for stem cell research at the medical center. Cathleen A. Acres, B.S.N., M.A., is the Division’s administrator as well as a faculty Lecturer. She is also a Research Subject Advocate in the Medical School’s General Clinical Research Center (GCRC), where she works with investigators and GCRC staff to ensure that their studies are conducted safely and ethically, with protection of human subjects accorded the highest priority. In this role she reports to Antonio M. Gotto, Jr., M.D., D.Phil, Dean of the Medical College. In addition, she lectures medical students in a range of courses and helps coordinate the Division’s education portfolio in clinical and research ethics. Pablo Rodríguez del Pozo, M.D., J.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Public Health, represents the Division at the Doha, Qatar, campus of Weill Cornell Medical College. He directs the entire Medical Ethics curriculum at that campus, using videoconferencing to be in close consultation with colleagues in New York. Dr. Rodríguez del Pozo and Dr. Fins co-authored the first publication from the medical college branch, “The Globalization of Education in Medical Ethics and Humanities: Evolving Pedagogy at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar” (Academic Medicine, Vol. 80, No. 2/February 2005), which discussed their experiences in implementing a Medical Ethics and Humanities course for premedical students. Drs . Rodríguez del Pozo and Fins and are also co-editors of a new section of Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics called “Spanish Bioethics.” Over the past several years, Dr. Joseph Fins has pursued research focused on the neuroethical issues of disorders of consciousness. He is especially interested in the “minimally conscious” brain state, which is neurologically distinct from the vegetative state. In collaboration with Nicholas D. Schiff, M.D., Associate Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience and Associate Professor of Public Health, Dr. Fins is working to understand the neuroscience of how people recover consciousness in order to elucidate clinical and ethical aspects of this impairment. His interest in neuroethics grew out of his long-time work in the field of end-of-life ethics and palliative care. Dr. Fins is renowned internationally as a champion of the rights of patients to be treated as whole individuals and receive appropriate and ethical care, and especially of their right to make decisions concerning their treatment. His most recent book, A Palliative Ethic of Care: Clinical Wisdom at Life’s End, both explores why there are so many difficulties surrounding end-of-life care and presents a guide for clinicians to help patients and families set and achieve goals of care. Dr. Fins received a number of honors in the past few years. In 2004 he was selected for an Excellence in Teaching Award for the ethics segment of the Medicine, Patients & Society II course, and in 2006 he received this award for teaching Advanced Basic Science. In addition, he was recently elected Governor-Elect of the American College of Physicians and to the Board of Directors of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of Wesleyan University, his alma mater. In 2005, he was appointed by Dean Gotto as chair of a committee that revised the Hippocratic Oath administered to graduating Weill Cornell students. Division Faculty:
In addition, there are roughly 20 other faculty members who have a secondary or adjunct position in the Division. Division initiatives include:
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