Faculty & Staff
 |
Howard Brody, M.D., Ph.D.
|
I have been at the Center since 1980 and served as its Director during 1985-2000. Before that, I completed my M.D. and my Ph.D. in philosophy at Michigan State University, and a residency in family practice at the University of Virginia. I currently divide my time roughly in half between the Center and the Department of Family Practice, where I maintain a part-time clinical practice and help to teach medical students and residents.
My major teaching responsibilities at the Center include directing the Ethics module of the SCCD Course, College of Human Medicine (HM 546) and the Humanities in Medicine course, HM 548. I also regularly participate in courses offered in Osteopathic Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, and Nursing, and teach more occasionally in the Department of Philosophy and in the Bioethics, Humanities and Society program.
Reserach Interests:
My current research interests include the following:
- My major current research project (2002-present) is the ethical and policy
implications of the relationship between the medical profession and the
pharmaceutical industry.
- My central interest in bioethics over many years has been the cluster
of issues that most affect the primary care physician in relationship with
the individual patient and/or family. I have worked especially on end of
life issues including medical futility and assisted suicide. My most recent
book on such issues is The Healer’s Power (Yale University
Press, 1992).
- An outgrowth of this interest in bioethics is my concern for narrative
ethics in medicine and the importance of narrative in understanding medical
practice and medical knowledge. My book on this topic, Stories of Sickness,
appeared in a revised, expanded edition in 2003 (Oxford).
- I became interested in narrative in part due to a long standing interest
in the placebo effect and the mind-body connection in medicine more generally.
My work on that topic appeared in the form of a trade book for a general
audience, The Placebo Response (HarperCollins, 2001). More recently
I have become involved peripherally with a research group headed by Dr.
Laura Symonds, using functional MRI imaging to explore the neuroanatomy
of an experimentally induced placebo response to pain.
- I have been privileged to be a member of the “Snowflakes”
group that produced the volume, Cholera, Chloroform and the Science
of Medicine: A Life of John Snow (Oxford University Press, 2003). My
current research interests include expansion and refinement of our John
Snow archival website and to develop curriculum in science education
using John Snow as a case study.
- My foray into history of medicine with the “Snowflakes” was
sufficiently addicting to suggest a follow-up project in the history of
bioethics—the writings of Michael Ryan, MD (? 1800-1840), a shadowy
figure who was one of the few in England to write about medical ethics between
1803 and 1878, and who was the first person known to style himself a “lecturer
in medical ethics.” Our volume on Ryan’s life and ethical writings
is anticipated in a series on history of medical ethics from Kluwer Academic.
- I have been privileged to work with Frank Miller of the Center for Clinical
Bioethics, NIH on a series of papers on professional integrity in medicine.
- I am collaborating with Linda Hunt of the Center on a paper exploring different senses of ‘race’ and their implications for genomic science.
Contact Me:
I usually respond more quickly to e-mail than to either phone messages or to regular mail! Contact me at: brody@msu.edu brody@msu.edu
