Professor
Seattle Children's Research Institute
University of Washington School of Medicine
Benjamin S. Wilfond, MD is the director of the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics and a pulmonologist at Seattle Children’s Hospital. He is professor and chief of the Division of Bioethics, Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine. Dr. Wilfond leads the Research Bioethics Consult Service for the Institute of Translational Health Sciences.
He conducts empirical research and conceptual scholarship focused on ethical and policy issues related to the boundaries between research and clinical care. He currently focuses on the integration of genomic testing into clinical practice, informed consent about research on medical practices, and decision-making about children with disabilities.
He is the co-chair of the CTSA Clinical Research Ethics Consultation Collaborative and the research ethics case co-editor of the American Journal of Bioethics. He is an elected member of the American Pediatric Society and a fellow of the Hastings Center. He is a past president of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors and has served on the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Bioethics, the American Society of Human Genetics Social Issues Committee, and the American Thoracic Society Bioethics Taskforce.
He attended New Jersey Medical School and completed his post graduate training at the University of Wisconsin. He has held faculty appointments at the University of Arizona, National Institutes of Health, and Johns Hopkins University. He is the founder and former chair of the National Human Genome Research Institute intramural IRB and has 30 years of experience on IRBs, DMCs, and as a clinical bioethics consultant.