James F. Childress John Allen Hollingsworth Professor of EthicsDirector, Institute for Practical Ethics and Public LifeProfessor of Medical Education Ph.D., Yale University, 1968M.A., Yale University, 1967B.A., Guilford College, 1962
Jim Childress is the John Allen Hollingsworth Professor of Ethics and Professor of Medical Education. He served as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, 1972-75 and 1986-94, as Principal of U.Va.'s Monroe Hill College from 1988 to 1991, and as co-director of the Virginia Health Policy Center 1991-99. In 1990 he was named Professor of the Year in the state of Virginia by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. And in 2002 he received the University of Virginia's highest honor, The Thomas Jefferson Award.
Childress is the author of numerous articles and several books in ethics, especially biomedical and political ethics. His books in biomedical ethics include Principles of Biomedical Ethics (with Tom L. Beauchamp), Priorities in Biomedical Ethics, (5th ed.); Who Should Decide? Paternalism in Health Care; and Practical Reasoning in Bioethics. His other books include Dictionary of Christian Ethics (2nd ed.), co-edited with John Macquarrie; Civil Disobedience and Political Obligation; and Moral Reasoning in Conflicts.
Childress was vice chair of the national Task Force on Organ Transplantation, and he has also served on the Board of Directors of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the UNOS Ethics Committee, the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, the Human Gene Therapy Subcommittee, the Biomedical Ethics Advisory Committee, and several Data and Safety Monitoring Boards for NIH clinical trials. From 1996 to 2001, he served on the presidentially appointed National Bioethics Advisory Commission.
Childress is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, in 1998, was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is also a fellow of the Hastings Center. He has been the Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Professor of Christian Ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University (1975-79) and a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Princeton University.
He received his B.A. from Guilford College, his B.D. from Yale Divinity School, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University.
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