• Minnesota

    Ethics Expert Named Director of Mayo Clinic Biomedical Ethics Program

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Richard Sharp, Ph.D., joins Mayo Clinic as director of the newly-formed Mayo Clinic Biomedical Ethics Program. Dr. Sharp and his team help researchers, physicians and patients address ethical questions brought about by advances in biology and medicine.

MULTIMEDIA ALERT:: Video of Dr. Sharp is available for download on the Mayo Clinic News Network.

Dr. Sharp leads the ethics activities within the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized MedicineCenter for Regenerative Medicine,Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery and the Center for Clinical and Translational Science.

"My goal for the new program is to provide institutional and national leadership on ethical issues raised by translational research and new developments in patient care," says Dr. Sharp.

The Biomedical Ethics Program includes bioethics research, institutional service and bioethics consultation, education, and bioethics programming and outreach.

Dr. Sharp comes to Mayo Clinic from Cleveland Clinic, where he served as the Director of Bioethics Research and Co-Director of the Center for Genetic Research Ethics and Law at Case Western Reserve University, one of six National Institutes of Health (NIH) Centers of Excellence in Ethics Research.

Dr. Sharp published widely on topics in biomedical ethics, including clinical ethics consultation, informed consent, financial conflicts of interest, and ethical tensions in patient advocacy. His current research is examining how patients and health care providers view new forms of personalized medicine and clinical interventions enabled by molecular diagnosis. Dr. Sharp frequently advises health care organizations on ethical issues and has served on advisory committees for the NIH, Institute of Medicine, American College of Medical Genetics, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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Media Contact: Colette Gallagher, 507-284-5005 (days), newsbureau@mayo.edu