Jonathan Kimmelman

Fellow, SCAS.
James McGill Professor of Biomedical Ethics, McGill University

Jonathan Kimmelman, PhD, is James McGill Professor of Biomedical Ethics at the Department of Equity,
Ethics and Policy, McGill University, and directs the Biomedical Ethics Unit as well as his own research
group, STREAM (Studies in Translation, Ethics and Medicine). Kimmelman’s research centers on ethical,
policy, and scientific dimensions of drug development. In addition to his book, Gene Transfer and the Ethics
of First-in-Human Research (Cambridge University Press, 2010), major publications have appeared in Science,
JAMA, BMJ, and Hastings Center Report.  Kimmelman received the Maud Menten New Investigator Prize
(2006), a CIHR New Investigator Award (2008), a Humboldt Bessel Award (2014), and he was elected a
Hastings Center Fellow (2018). He has sat on various advisory bodies within the U.S. NHLBI and NIAID,
served for four tours of duty on U.S. National Academies of Medicine committees, and chaired the Inter-
national Society for Stem Cell Research Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation revision
task force 2015-16. His research has been covered in major media outlets, including NPR’s All Things Con-
sidered, STATNews, and Nature. Kimmelman is deputy editor at Clinical Trials and serves as an associate
editor at PLoS Biology.

During his time at SCAS, Kimmelman will work on a book he is writing on the moral economy of drug develop-
ment. The book draws on philosophical and empirical methods to explore the relationship between the human a
nd animal welfare modern societies feed into the drug development, and the mostly human benefits that human
societies gain from drug development. The core thesis is that human and nonhuman animals have strong moral
claims on shaping both the content of medical research, as well as the ultimate applications of research.

Jonathan Kimmelman is in residence in the autumn of 2023.
This information is accurate as of the academic year 2023-24.