Menu Close
Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Harvard University

Norman Daniels is Mary B. Saltonstall Professor and Professor of Ethics and Population Health at Harvard School of Public Health. Formerly Goldthwaite Professor, Chair of the Tufts Philosophy Department, and Professor of Medical Ethics at Tufts Medical School, where he taught from 1969 until 2002, he has degrees from Wesleyan (B.A. Summa, 1964), Balliol College, Oxford (B.A., First Honors, 1966), and Harvard (Ph.D., Plympton Dissertation Prize, 1971). He has written widely in the philosophy of science (Thomas Reid's `Inquiry': the Geometry of Visibles and the Case for Realism (1974; Stanford, 1989), ethics, political and social philosophy (including Reading Rawls (1975; Stanford, 1989) and medical ethics. He has published 200 articles in anthologies and such journals as Isis, Philosophy of Science, Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Review, Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Journal of Political Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Bioethics, AJOB, JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal, Lancet, Hastings Center Report, Health Affairs, Nature Medicine, WHO Bulletin, AJPH, Economics and Philosophy, Daedalus and others. His books include Thomas Reid’s Discovery of a Non-Euclidean Geometry (Burt Franklin, 1974, Stanford 1989), Just Health Care (Cambridge, 1985); Am I My Parents' Keeper? An Essay on Justice Between the Young and the Old (Oxford, 1988); Seeking Fair Treatment: From the AIDS Epidemic to National Health Care Reform, Oxford, 1995); Justice and Justification: Reflective Equilibrium in Theory and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 1996); (with Donald Light and Ronald Caplan) Benchmarks of Fairness for Health Care Reform (Oxford, 1996); (with Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, and Dan Wikler) From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (Cambridge, 2000); (with Bruce Kennedy and Ichiro Kawachi) Is Inequality Bad for Our Health? (Beacon Press, 2000); and (with James Sabin) Setting Limits Fairly: Can We Learn to Share Medical Resources? (Oxford, 2002; 2nd edition 2008). His Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly (CUP, 2008) is a sequel to Just Health Care and integrates his work into a comprehensive theory of justice for health. His current research focuses on adapting the "benchmarks of fairness" for use in less developed countries (WHO Bulletin, 2000, 2005), on developing fair process for priority and limit setting decisions about resource allocation in various settings, including the new Mexican health insurance plan (Health Affairs 2003, Lancet 2005), and on issues of global justice.

Experience

  • –present
    Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Harvard Medical School