PHILADELPHIA — The University of Pennsylvania’s Jonathan Moreno has been invited to join the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s International Bioethics Committee. Moreno is a Penn Integrates Knowledge professor with appointments in the Perelman School of Medicine’s Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy and the School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of History and Sociology of Science. He holds the David and Lyn Silfen University Professorship of Ethics. 

UNESCO’s mission is to encourage peace and security through the promotion of education and international collaboration. In the field of bioethics, the organization has become a leading forum for trans-disciplinary and multicultural debate and reflection on advancement in the life sciences.

Moreno will serve as one of 36 independent experts on the International Bioethics Committee, which is instructed to promote “reflection on the legal and ethical issues raised by the life sciences and their applications,” as well as to encourage knowledge sharing and awareness building related to bioethics.  

Moreno has been called the “most interesting bioethicist of our time” by the American Journal of Bioethics. His wide-ranging research interests include biopolitics, history of bioethics, science ethics, human-research ethics and national-security-research ethics.

In 2008-9, Moreno served on President Obama’s transition team.

He has also published several books, most recently The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America, which was named a Best Book of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews.

Moreno is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a National Associate of the National Research Council and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

Moreno will serve on the International Bioethics Committee for a four-year term.