CHCE Ethics Experts:

Gerard Magill, Ph.D

Gerard Magill, Ph.D., is a Professor and the Executive Director of the Center for Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University (Health Sciences). Also, he is the Department Chair of the Center’s interdisciplinary PhD program in health care ethics. He has a secondary appointment as Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine (School of Medicine and University Hospital) and a secondary appointment as Professor of Health Administration in the School of Public Health at Saint Louis University. He graduated with a Ph.D. degree from Edinburgh University in 1987. He has published many scholarly essays and several books, including, as editor: Discourse and Context (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993); Personality and Belief (Lanham, NJ: University of America Press, 1994); Values and Public Life, with Marie D. Hoff (Lanham, NJ: University of America Press, 1995); Abortion and Public Policy, with R. Randall Rainey (Omaha, Nebraska: University of Creighton Press, 1996), and Genetics and Ethics. An Interdisciplinary Study (St. Louis, MO: Saint Louis University Press, 2004). He has been awarded over $6 million in grants and funded projects and he is an active member of 14 professional Associations. He has accrued 28 years teaching in graduate education. His research specialties include: the ethics of the human genome and stem cell research, health care ethics in the Catholic tradition, and organizational ethics in health care.

Ana Smith Iltis, Ph.D.

Ana Smith Iltis, Ph.D., has completed her PhD in the Department of Philosophy at Rice University with a dissertation entitled, A Philosophical Exploration of the Possibility and Implications of Institutional Moral Agency. She joined the faculty of the Center for Health Care Ethics in January 2003 as a tenure-track Assistant Professor. Her specializations include the ethics of human subjects research and organizational ethics. She is currently Assistant Editor of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy and co-editor of the Annals of Bioethics, a book series published by Routledge.

Program Ethics Experts:

Linda Ganzini, M.D., M.P. H.

Linda Ganzini, M.D., M.P. H., joined the OHSU Department of Psychiatry faculty immediately upon completion of a gerontology fellowship at the Portland VA Medical Center (PVAMC) and a visiting fellowship in psychogeriatrics at Guy’s-Hithergreen Hospital, London, in 1989. She also joined the psychiatry staff at the Portland VA as Director of Consult-Liaison Psychiatry (1989-98). From 1993-95, she was co-director of the PVAMC demonstration project, "Enhancing the Management and Continuity of Mental Health Care of Older Veterans in the Acute Psychiatry and Nursing Home Care Unit Settings." From 1994-97, she was director of the OHSU Medical Student Clerkship in Psychiatry, and from 1996-2001, she was associate director of the OHSU Psychiatry Residency Training Program. The department honored her with the Psychiatry Residency Teaching Award in 1991 and the Distinguished Service Award in 1996 in recognition of her contributions to the residency training program. She was awarded the Nancy C.A. Roeske, M.D., Certificate of Recognition for Excellence in Medical Student Education by the American Psychiatric Association in 1997 and the Faculty Development Award, in 2003.

Dr. Ganzini’s research interests are centered in the areas of geriatric mental health, end-of-life care issues, and improving palliative care for the terminally ill. She received the Young Investigator Award from the NIMH International Congress on Schizophrenia Research in 1991, and in 1993, the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology presented her with its Young Investigator Award. She received the Portland Veterans Affairs Health Care Research Award in 1994. Dr. Ganzini has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, invited articles, book chapters, editorials and commentaries on the topics of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, physician-assisted suicide (PAS), assessing mental health in the terminally ill, and medical ethics among psychiatrists and health care providers.

Ann Jackson, M.B.A.

Ann Jackson, M.B.A., has been the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Oregon Hospice Association (OHA) since April 1988. OHA is a 501 c(3) public benefit membership organization dedicated to ensuring access to high quality hospice and comfort care for all Oregonians. Locally, Jackson is active on the Task Force to Improve Care for Terminally ill.

Oregonians, the Physicians Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment Task Force (POLST), and the Health Ethics Network of Oregon (HENNO). She was recently elected to the board of Combined Health Charities in Oregon.

Nationally, Jackson is a member of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s (NHPCO) Council of States steering committee, the nominating committee, the regulatory committee’s subcommittee on demonstration projects, and the State Hospice Executives Roundtable (SHOER). She is working with Senator Ron Wyden’s office to develop legislation for a demonstration project expanding the Medicare Hospice Benefit and she is a member of Congresswoman Darlene Hooley’s advisory committee on health care.

Joanne Lynn, M.D.

Joanne Lynn, M.D., is an internationally known leader in helping terminally ill patients improve quality of life. Her writings focus on helping all people approach the end of life with greater awareness of what to expect and greater confidence about how to make the end of our lives a time of growth, comfort and meaningful reflection. She is the Director of the Center to Improve Care of the Dying (CIDC) at George Washington Medical School in Washington, D.C.

Sylvia McSkimming, PhD, RN

Sylvia McSkimming, PhD, RN, is the Executive Director of Supportive Care of the Dying: A Coalition for Compassionate Care. The mission of their group is commitment to bring about cultural change regarding pain and symptom management and relief of suffering for persons living with and affected by life-threatening illness.

Peter A. Rasmussen, M.D.

Peter A. Rasmussen, M.D., is a medical oncologist in private practice in Salem, Oregon. Dr. Rasmussen is board certified in hospice and palliative medicine. He is the lead plaintiff in the Death with Dignity Center’s legal proceedings against Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Mark Siegler, M.D., FACP

Mark Siegler, M.D., FACP, is the Lindy Bergman Distinquished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, Professor in the Department of Medicine, and the Director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics.

An honors graduate of Princeton University, he received his medical degree in 1967 from University of Chicago. He was intern, resident, and Chief Resident in Medicine at the University of Chicago Hospitals, followed by a year of advanced training at the Hammersmith Royal Postgraduate Hospital in London, England.

In 1984, the University of Chicago established the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, one of the first in the nation devoted to this clinical specialty, and appointed Dr. Siegler as its Director. Since 1984, the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics has trained more than 120 physicians and nurses, many of whom now direct programs at leading U.S. and Canadian medical schools. For three consecutive years, the ethics program at the University of Chicago was selected by U.S. News and World Report as the number-one medical ethics program in the country. Dr. Siegler has held many lectureships and visiting professorships in the United States and abroad and has been the recipient of more than twenty-five federal and foundation research grants. He has practiced general medicine for more than thirty years and is one of the few physicians who combines expertise in medical ethics with an active medical practice.

Dr. Siegler has been a Fellow of the Hastings Center since 1982. He has been a member of the Ethics Committees of the American Geriatrics Society, the American College of Physicians, and currently serves on the ethics committee of the American College of Surgeons and on the Advisory Board of the Spanish Bioethics Institute. He is also an elected member of the American Association of Physicians. In 1996, he was awarded the Chirone Prize for his work in medicine and ethics by the Italian Medical Association and the University of Bologna, the oldest university medical school in Europe. In 1997, he shared first Italian Medical Quality of Life Award with Professor Rita Montalcini, a Nobel Prize laureate.

Daniel P. Sulmasy, O.F.M., M.D., Ph.D.

Daniel P. Sulmasy, O.F.M., M.D., Ph.D., a Franciscan Friar, holds the Sisters of Charity Chair in Ethics at Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, St. Vincent’s Manhattan, and serves as Professor of Medicine and Director of the Bioethics Institute of New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY.

Dr. Sulmasy received his A.B. and M.B. degrees from Cornell University and completed his residency, chief residency, and post-doctoral fellowship in General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Georgetown University in 1995. From 1991 to 1998 he served on the faculty at Georgetown, where he was Director of the Center for Clinical Bioethics and Senior Research Scholar of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. He is a Soros Faculty Scholar of the Project on Death in America. His research interests include both theoretical and empirical studies of end-of-life decision-making, ethics education, and the ethics of cost-containment in medicine.

Dr. Sulmasy is the author of a book on spirituality for health care professionals, entitled, The Healer’s Calling, and is co-editor of Methods in Medical Ethics, published by Georgetown University Press in 2001. He serves as editor-in-chief of the journal, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. His numerous articles have appeared in medical, philosophical, and theological journals and he has lectured widely both in the U.S. and abroad.

Scott Blaine Swenson, ODWD

Scott Blaine Swenson, ODWD Executive Director, has been involved in the assisted dying issue since the 1997 U.S. Supreme Court cases. Mr. Swenson has been intimately involved in the strategies to prevent federal intrusion. The Death with Dignity National Center (DDNC) is the organization that has successfully proposed, passed, defended and helped implement a first-in-the-nation law that allows terminally ill individuals meeting stringent safeguards, to hasten their own deaths. Since the law’s implementation, few have used it – all in extreme cases of late-stage terminal illness. Yet despite its limited use, the law has provided limitless comfort to those in need.

Timothy E. Quill, M.D.

Timothy E. Quill, M.D., is a Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry, and Medical Humanities at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Director of the Program for Biopsychosocial Studies, Director of the Palliative Care Programs, and a primary care internist and palliative care consultant in Rochester, New York.

Dr. Quill has published and lectured widely about various aspects of the doctor-patient relationship, with special focus on end-of-life decision making, including delivering bad news, nonabandonment, discussing palliative care earlier, and exploring last-resort options. He is the author of several books on end-of-life, including Caring for Patients at the End of Life: Facing an Uncertain Future Together (Oxford University Press, 2001), and A Midwife Through the Dying Process: Stories of Healing and Hard Choices at the End of Life (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), and numerous articles published in major medical journals including "Death and Dignity: A Case of Individualized Decision Making" published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Quill was the lead physician plaintiff in the New York State legal case challenging the law prohibiting physician-assisted death that was heard in 1997 by the U.S. Supreme Court (Quill v. Vacco).

Dr. Quill received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College (1971), and his M.D. from the University of Rochester (1976). He completed his Internal Medicine residency in 1979 and a Fellowship in Medicine/Psychiatry Liaison in 1981, both from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. Dr. Quill is a Fellow in the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Academy on Physician and Patient.

Patricia A. Talone, RSM, Ph.D.

Patricia A. Talone, RSM, Ph.D., is the Vice President, Mission Services with Catholic Health Association. Prior to joining CHA she was Vice President for Mission Services and Ethicist for Unity Health, a subsidiary of the Sisters of Mercy Health System.

(Rev.) John F. Tuohey, Ph.D

(Rev.) John F. Tuohey, Ph.D., holds the Endowed Chair in Applied Health Care Ethics at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, and serves as director for Providence Center for Health Care Ethics in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Tuohey received his PhD from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium with the dissertation: Pattliative Care: A Study of the Foundations, Philosophy, Practice and Ethical Principles of Health Care for the Terminally Ill. Before joining Providence Health System in 1998, Dr. Tuohey was Corporate Ethicist for the Mercy Health System – Oklahoma, and had been Associate Professor of Moral Theology at the Catholic University of American in Washington, DC. Dr. Tuohey’s dissertation was published as the book, Caring for Persons with AIDS and Cancer in 1988. His most recent publications include essays on end-of-life care and suicide in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, a chapter contribution to Catholic Ethicists on HIV/AIDS Prevention, and "Opposing Moral Error in Society: The Need to Respect Various Viewpoints" in Health Progress.