Daniel Sulmasy

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Daniel Sulmasy is an American medical ethicist and physician. Since January 2021, he has directed the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University and teaches at the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics. He is the first André Hellegers Professor of Biomedical Ethics, with shared appointments in Georgetown’s Philosophy and Medicine departments.

He earned a PhD from Georgetown and an MD from Cornell, and completed his residency, chief residency, and a post‑doctoral fellowship in general internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. His research covers end‑of‑life ethics, ethics education, and spirituality in medicine. He is known for work on the role of intention in medical action, including the rule of double effect and the difference between killing and letting die, as well as the philosophy of medicine and how doctors reason about diagnosis and treatment. His empirical work looks at surrogate decision‑making for dying patients and informed consent for research. He continues to practice medicine part‑time.

Sulmasy has held faculty positions at the University of Chicago and New York Medical College and has served on many government advisory committees, including the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues from 2010 to 2017. He is emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he held several roles in medicine and ethics, directed the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, and led the Program on Medicine and Religion.

A former Franciscan friar, he married Lois Snyder in 2015. He has written or edited six books, including The Healer’s Calling and The Rebirth of the Clinic, and he is editor‑in‑chief of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics.