Research Program
Because of the number of practicing physicians on the faculty, MacLean research has always been on the cutting edge of both medicine and ethics, with ethical research proceeding in tandem with medical advances. For instance, the MacLean Center was involved in the introduction of pediatric live-donor liver transplantation in 1989. This novel procedure held therapeutic promise but also raised complex ethical questions about medical innovation, risk/benefit balancing, and informed consent. The MacLean Center worked with transplant experts at the University of Chicago to review the ethical issues, publish protocols, and encourage professional discussion of the procedure before it was first performed on a patient.
Our transplant work is but one example of the varied ethics-related research projects undertaken by our faculty. The MacLean Center faculty publish prolifically on subjects such as research ethics, medical futility, pediatric outcomes, genetics, and transplantation ethics, among many others. The MacLean Center is also home to the journal, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, an international publication devoted to theoretical scholarship in the philosophy of medicine and bioethics. Founded over 30 years ago, it is one of the oldest and most prestigious journals publishing scholarly work in these fields. MacLean Center Assistant Director Daniel Sulmasy has served as editor-in-chief since 2002. To read the online version, subscribe, or submit a manuscript, please click here.
Here are further examples of current research interests of select members of our faculty:
Mark Siegler, MD
Director
Dr. Siegler was one of the first physician-ethicists to write on clinical medical ethics and has held a career-long clinical and research interest in the doctor-patient relationship. Dr. Siegler has also published widely on end-of-life issues, organ transplantation, ethical aspects of medical and surgical innovation, and on the ethics of clinical research.
Peter Angelos, MD, PhD
Associate Director
Dr. Angelos an expert in treating endocrine cancers, including thyroid, parathyroid, and adrenocortical cancers, as well as islet cell tumors of the pancreas. Dr. Angelos has published several journal articles and book chapters on his research into improving outcomes of thyroid and parathyroid surgery, minimally invasive endocrine surgery, and best practices for thyroid cancer treatment. He has also written widely on ethical issues in surgical practice and how to best teach medical ethics to surgical residents.
Lainie Ross, MD, PhD
Associate Director
Dr. Ross has an NIH grant to study return of individual genetic results to research participants in a biobank. The project uses a deliberative democracy approach to educate the community and provides an environment in which to promote discussion, so that community members can tell us what an educated public would want. We are interested in learning what factors would persuade and what factors would dissuade persons from participation, and when, if ever, people believe that participants should be re-contacted and informed of findings. Dr. Ross is also working on the ethical issues regarding sickle cell trait testing of NCAA division 1 athletes.
Dr. Ross is currently working on a book on ethical and policy issues in living donor transplantation.
Daniel Sulmasy, OFM, MD, PhD
Associate Director
Editor in Chief, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics
Dr. Sulmasy's research interests embrace the philosophy of medicine, medical ethics, and spirituality in medicine, employing both theoretical and empirical approaches. His current empirical projects include investigations of surrogate decision making and informed consent for early phase clinical trials. His theoretical work includes book projects on dignity and on spirituality for physicians. His latest book, Methods in Medical Ethics, 2nd ed., was published by Georgetown University Press in 2010.
Kruti Acharya, MD
Dr. Lainie Ross and Dr. Kruti Acharya are working on a project about maternal sickle cell trait (SCT). There are some data to suggest that maternal SCT may increase the risk of low birth weight and prematurity; this project investigates both the clinical question as well as what women are told about SCT during prenatal care.
Caleb Alexander, MD
Dr. Alexander's research focuses on the patient-physician relationship and clinical decision-making regarding prescription drugs. He has conducted widely cited studies using both survey and administrative data to explore topics such as patient-physician communication about out-of-pocket costs, off-label prescription drug use, and the effects of regulatory policies on prescription drug utilization and expenditures.
Daniel Brauner, MD
Dr. Brauner’s area of interest is ethical issues as they impact on older patients. His research currently involves an historical socio-linguistic analysis of the current customs of care surrounding Advance Directives. Dr. Brauner is also interested in how dementia impacts on care and decision-making and is involved in developing a model he calls Three Person Decision-Making Discourse.
Daniel Brudney, PhD
Dr. Brudney’s current focus is on the moral value or values that might justify a patient’s right to refuse treatment, including life-saving treatment. Existing law takes the value of agency as the moral basis for the right to refuse. Dr. Brudney is interested in whether that value is in fact sufficient to sustain this right; if not, which other value might be sufficient; and what the implications for clinical conduct are of invoking a value other than agency.
Farr Curlin, MD
Dr. Curlin’s empirical research charts the influence of physicians' moral traditions and commitments, both religious and secular, on physicians' clinical practices. As an ethicist he addresses questions regarding whether and in what ways physicians' religious commitments ought to shape their clinical practices in our plural democracy. As founding Co-Director of the Program on Medicine and Religion at the University of Chicago, Dr. Curlin is working with Dan Sulmasy and colleagues from the Pritzker School of Medicine and the University of Chicago Divinity School to foster inquiry into and public discourse regarding the intersections of religion and the practice of medicine.
Chris Daugherty, MD
Dr. Daugherty's research focuses on ethical issues involved in the treatment of cancer. He is a national and international authority on doctor-patient communication, decision-making, end-of-life care, and informed consent as they relate to the care of cancer patients and their participation in clinical research.
Stacy Lindau, MD
Dr. Stacy Lindau’s ethics-related research efforts include her work as Principal Investigator of the South Side Health and Vitality Studies, the research arm of the Medical Center’s Urban Health Initiative, that aims to reform health care access for and reduce health disparities among Chicago’s South Side residents. Dr. Lindau’s clinical research focuses on female sexuality in the context of disease such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and informs her work as the Director of the Program in Integrative Sexual Medicine for Women and Girls with Cancer (PRISM). Dr. Lindau is currently collaborating with researchers on the national, multi-site TRIUMPH Registry to determine patterns of sexual loss following an acute myocardial infarction and to determine physicians’ roles in the preservation of sexual functioning following an event.
William Meadow, MD, PhD
Dr. Meadow’s research focuses on Neonatal Epidemiology and Prognostication. Current research asks whether a time-limited trial of NICU intensive therapy provides prognostic information that allows parents to know more about their infant's likely outcome than would be available at the time of birth.
Alison Winter, PhD
Professor Winter’s research interests center on the sciences of mind, and more broadly the human sciences, since the eighteenth century. Her research has focused on the history of modern medicine, the historical construction of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the sciences and medicine, modern British history (especially Victorian studies) and historical issues of gender.
John Yoon, MD
Dr. Yoon is an academic hospitalist and medical educator with research interests in the field of virtue ethics, moral psychology, and moral and professional formation in medical education. He is currently co-investigator on the Project on the Good Physician, a longitudinal study of medical students funded by the New Science of Virtues Project at the University of Chicago. Dr. Yoon is interested in developing the architecture and methods needed to carry out a longitudinal study of the formation of medical virtues and a sense of calling in physicians-in-training.