Dr. Bonnie Steinbock has been awarded a month-long scholarly residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, located on Lake Como, Italy. She will be a participant in this prestigious residency while on a sabbatical this fall. During her time at Bellagio, Dr. Steinbock will be writing a chapter on embryonic stem cell research for the second edition of her book, Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses (Oxford University Press, 1992). She will be joined during her residency by artists, writers, activists, scientists, policy makers and other scholars. As described on its website, “A Bellagio residency provides time for critical thinking, disciplined work, individual reflection, and collegial engagement, uninterrupted by the usual professional and personal demands... The combination of private time for work and reflection and informal gatherings is an important part of life at the Center.”

Professor Steinbock has been a member of the Philosophy Department since 1977. Her main area of research is bioethics, with interests in law and public health. Within bioethics, she has focused primarily on issues in reproduction and genetics. She has written over 60 articles, the most recent being “Wrongful Life and Procreative Decisions,” forthcoming in Melinda A. Roberts and David T. Wasserman, eds., Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics, and the Nonidentity Problem, (Springer). She has edited or co-edited five books, the most recent being the Oxford Handbook of Bioethics (2007) and (with Alex London and John Arras) Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, 7th edition (2008). She is a Fellow of the Hastings Center and is currently a member of one of its working groups: “Pharmacologically Treating Behavioral and Emotional Disturbances in Children: Engaging the Controversies.” She is also a member of the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). Additionally, Dr. Steinbock is on the faculty of the Alden March Bioethics Institute (AMBI) at Albany Medical College, and the Union Graduate College/Mount Sinai Bioethics program.

June 3, 2008