DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

Mark Sheldon is Distinguished Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Philosophy at Northwestern University and is also faculty in the Medical Ethics and Humanities Program at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. He received his PhD from Brandeis University, where he was awarded a travelling fellowship to study at Oxford University. He has served as Adjunct Senior Scholar at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago, and Senior Policy Analyst at the American Medical Association. Formerly Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Indiana University (Northwest campus) and Indiana University School of Medicine, he has also served as an ethicist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. From 2004 until 2017 Sheldon also served as assistant dean in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. Sheldon has published and presented talks on a variety of issues including informed consent, confidentiality, the forced transfusion of children of Jehovah's Witnesses, children as organ donors, disclosure, and the use of Nazi research. He has contributed book chapters and published in a variety of journals including The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Hastings Center Report, The Philosophical Forum, The Journal of Value Inquiry, and The New England Journal of Medicine. He has served as guest editor of two journals - Theoretical Medicine and The Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. He has served a three-year term as a member of the Committee on Philosophy and Medicine of the American Philosophical Association, and served as co-editor of the American Philosophical Association’s Newsletter on Philosophy and Medicine from 2000 until 2019. He also served as a member of the Task Force on Genetics for the Illinois Humanities Council. The focus of his research is the point at which the interests of children, the prerogatives of parents, and the obligations of the state often come into conflict in relation to medical decisions for children.

Recent research activities:

Publications:

“Ethical Principles in Personal Protective Equipment Inventory Management Decisions and Partnerships Across State Lines During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” with Tazim Merchant, et al, Public Health Reports, Dec 2021

“Ethics of Transitioning from Curative Care to Palliative Care: Potential Conflicts of Interest Using the Example of Neurosurgery,” with Nathan A Shlobin and Mark Bernstein, World Neurosurgery 168: 139-145. December 2022.

“Comments by opponents on the British Medical Association’s guidance on non-therapeutic male circumcision of children seem one-sided and may undermine public health,” with Stephen Moreton, Guy Cox, Stefan A Bailis, Jeffrey D Klausner, Brian J Morris, World Journal of Clinical Pediatrics, Vol 12, Issue 5, December 9, 2023.

Presentations:

“Revisiting the Use of Children as Organ Donors,” The 32^nd Annual Dorothy J MacLean Fellows Conference on Clinical Medical Ethics, The University of Chicago, November 14, 2020

“Social Models and Biomedical Interventions: The Case for Trait Parity,” Commentator, The American Philosophical Association, Annual Central Division Meeting, 26 February 2022.

Invited Panel member, The Bioethics of Stem Cell Research Expert Panel Workshop, University of York and the York Health Economics Consortium, 10 March 2022