Daniel Sulmasy

Dr. Sulmasy is Acting Director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and a Senior Research Scholar. Dr. Sulmasy holds a joint appointment at the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics. He is the inaugural Andre Hellegers Professor of Biomedical Ethics, with co-appointments in the Departments of Philosophy and Medicine at Georgetown.

Sulmasy received his B.A. from Cornell University (1978), his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College (1982) and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Georgetown University (1995). As a philosopher and medical doctor, his research sits at the intersection of medicine, spirituality, and ethics.  Specifically, Sulmasy pursues understanding how people make end-of-life decisions by examining the relationship between spirituality and medicine. He approaches this connection from the perspective of the patient, medical professional, and broader medical field. Much of his research has analyzed how patients and surrogates come to make crucial decisions at the end of life, how they incorporate their spiritual and religious beliefs in these decisions and then how care providers respond to these choices. Further, he pursues philosophical questions about how all of these parties distinguish between “killing” and “allowing to die.” He served on the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Problems under President Obama. He’s published six books and over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles focusing on spirituality, health care and medical ethics, including:

• A Balm for Gilead: Meditations on Spirituality and the Healing Arts. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006.
• The Rebirth of the Clinic: An Introduction to Spirituality in Health Care. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006.
• The Healer’s Calling: A Spirituality for Physicians and Other Health Care Professionals. New York: Paulist Press, 1997. Sugarman J, Sulmasy DP, eds.
• Spirituality, religion, and clinical care. Chest2009;135:1634-42.
• Ethics and the Christian lives of clinicians. Journal of Medicine and the Person 2010;8:15-20.
• Christian witness in healthcare. Christian Bioethics2016; 22:45-61.
• Death and dignity in Catholic Christian thought. Med Health Care Philos 2017;20:537-543.
• Holding life and death in dynamic tension. Health ProgressNovember-December, 2017;98(6): 30-34.
• The last low whispers of our dead: when is it ethically justifiable to render a patient unconscious until death? Theor Med Bioeth2018;39:233-263.
• Physician-assisted suicide and the perils of empirical ethical research. JAMA Netw Open 2019 Aug 2;2(8)

For more background information on Dr. Sulmasy, please visit https://kennedyinstitute.georgetown.edu/people/daniel-sulmasy/