Daniel Sulmasy, MD, PhD, MACP is a Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and on the faculty of 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.
His research interests encompass both theoretical and empirical investigations of the ethics of end-of-life decision-making, ethics education, and spirituality in medicine. He has done extensive work on the role of intention in medical action, especially as it relates to the rule of double effect and the distinction between killing and allowing to die. He is also interested in the philosophy of medicine and the logic of diagnostic and therapeutic reasoning. His work in spirituality is focused primarily on the spiritual dimensions of the practice of medicine. His empirical studies have explored topics such as decision-making by surrogates on behalf of patients who are nearing death, and informed consent for biomedical research.
He is the author or editor of seven books: The Healer’s Calling (1997), Methods in Medical Ethics (2001; 2nd ed. 2010, 3rd ed. 2026), The Rebirth of the Clinic (2006), A Balm for Gilead (2006), Safe Passage: A Global Spiritual Sourcebook for Care at the End of Life (2013), Francis the Leper: Faith, Medicine, Theology, and Science (2014), and Physician Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: Before, During, and After the Holocaust (2020). He also serves as editor-in-chief of the journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics.