Jonathan H. Marks is associate professor of bioethics, humanities and law at Penn State University, and director of the Bioethics and Medical Humanities Program at the main campus, University Park. His mission is to develop bioethics programs and strengthen interdisciplinary and collaborative work in the field, bringing together dynamic scholars from liberal arts, medicine, life sciences and law--within his own institution and in the academic community at large.
Much of the literature in bioethics is concerned with micro-bioethics questions, often involving discrete issues of patient care. Although these questions are of considerable importance, Jonathan is particularly interested in exploring macro-bioethics problems involving, for example, access to health care, the conduct of clinical trials in both the developed and developing world and the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry. These issues are just as important but often neglected, particularly in mainstream audiovisual media.
Every hour that legislators, academics and commentators spent debating whether Terry Schiavo's feeding tube should be removed, two Americans died for lack of health insurance (according to figures published by the Institute of Medicine in 2004).
Jonathan's writing has appeared in The Times (London), the New York Times, LA Times and the New England Journal of Medicine among others. He has been interviewed on NPR, BBC Radio and Voice of America (among others) and he has recently participated in three nationally broadcast panels on law and medical ethics at Guantanamo Bay.
