Virginia Ashby Sharpe, PhD: Medical Ethicist

In her role as Medical Ethicist, Virginia Ashby Sharpe contributes to the Center’s work on ethics policy and clinical ethics. Prior to her appointment, she was Director of the Project on Integrity in Science at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a Washington, DC-based consumer organization. This work focused on the commercialization of science and conflicts of interest in scientific research and science-based policy. From 1997 to 2001 she was Deputy Director and Associate for Biomedical and Environmental Ethics at the Hastings Center in Garrison, NY.

She has written and spoken widely on patient safety and health care quality; scientific integrity and conflicts of interest; ethical expertise in the courtroom; environmental justice; and wolf restoration. Her books include: Accountability: Patient Safety and Policy Reform (Georgetown University Press, 2004), Wolves and Human Communities (Island Press, 2001), and Medical Harm: Historical, Conceptual and Ethical Dimensions of Iatrogenic Illness (Cambridge U. Press, 1998).

She is also a visiting scholar at Georgetown University where she teaches bioethics, clinical ethics, and environmental justice.