James F. Childress, Ph.D.
(Yale University) 
Edwin B. Kyle Professor,
Department of Religious Studies 
804-924-6724
jfc7c @Virginia.edu

James F. Childress is the Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Religious Studies and Professor of Medical Education at the University of Virginia, where he is also co-director of the Virginia Health Policy Center. He served as Principal of UVA's Monroe Hill College from 1988 to 1991, and as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. 1972-1975, 1986-1994. In 1990 he was named Professor of the Year in the state of Virginia by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. He is the author of numerous articles and several books in biomedical ethics, including Principles of Biomedical Ethics (with Tom L. Beauchamp), Priorities in Biomedical Ethics, Who Should Decide? Paternalism in Health Care, and Practical Reasoning in Bioethics (forthcoming). He as vice chair of the national Task Force on Organ Transplantation, and he has also served on the Board of Directors of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the UNOS Ethics Committee, the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, the Human Gene Therapy Subcommittee, the Biomedical Ethics Advisory Committee, and several Data and Safety Monitoring Boards for NIH clinical trials. In July 1996, President Clinton appointed him to the newly formed National Bioethics Advisory Commission. Childress is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as of the Hastings Center, and he has been the Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Professor of Christian Ethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University (1975-79) and a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Princeton University. He received his B.A. from Guilford College, his B.D. from Yale Divinity School, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University.