Rebecca Susan Dresser
Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor and Professor of Ethics in Medicine
Office: Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 547
Phone: (314) 935-8769
E-mail: dresser@wulaw.wustl.edu
Assistant: Jamie Roggen - (314) 935-6432
- Curriculum Vitae [view]
(For the most recent list of publications and activities, please see the current CV.) - Activities [view]
- Publications [view]
Courses Taught
Biomedical Research Law and Policy Seminar
Bioethics and Law
Genetics Law and Policy Seminar
Regulating Drugs and Other Medical Products
Education
B.A., 1973, Indiana University-Bloomington
M.S., 1975, Indiana University-Bloomington
J.D. 1979, Harvard University
Profile
Rebecca Dresser is the Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law and Professor of Ethics in Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis. Since 1983, she has taught medical and law students about legal and ethical issues in end-of-life care, biomedical research, genetics, assisted reproduction, and related topics. Before coming to Washington University, she taught at Baylor College of Medicine and Case Western Reserve University. She was also a National Institute of Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School, and a Fellow in Ethics and the Professions at Harvard University. In June-July 2003, she was a Visiting Research Scholar at the University of Tokyo, where she taught a short course in law and bioethics. She received her law degree from Harvard Law School.
From 1997-2002, Dresser was a member of the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and from 1997-2001, she served on the Advisory Council of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, a division of the National Institutes of Health. From 1987-1994, she was the Legal Consultant to the Committee on Bioethics of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dresser is a Fellow of the Hastings Center and is one of the "At Law" columnists for the Hastings Center Report, a widely read U.S. bioethics journal.
Her book, "When Science Offers Salvation: Patient Advocacy and Research Ethics," was published by Oxford University Press in 2001. She is a co-author of "The Human Use of Animals: Case Studies in Ethical Choice" (Oxford University Press, 1998, 2nd ed. 2008) and "Bioethics and Law: Cases, Materials and Problems" (West Publishing Co., 2003). She has also written commissioned papers for the National Academy of Sciences and the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. From 2002-2009, she was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.