Jason Adam Wasserman, PhD, HEC-C is Professor in the Department of Health Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, where he also serves as Director of Education and Director of the Master’s Program in Health Humanities and Bioethics and as a clinical ethics consultant for University of Rochester Medical Center. His scholarly work centers on the problems that arise when ethical theories encounter the complicating realities of clinical practice.
His research addresses some of the most contested problems in contemporary clinical ethics. He has written on the proper scope of conscientious objection—arguing that conscience protections apply to healthcare institutions as well as to individual clinicians—and on the standards governing treatment decisions for patients who cannot speak for themselves, including those with diminished or absent decision-making capacity. His work in pediatric ethics examines parental authority, the best-interest standard, and the normative status of pediatric assent.
Wasserman is also a scholar of the medical humanities, with sustained attention to how the darker corners of the history of medicine continue to shape the foundations of contemporary medicine and bioethics. His work on medicine and the Holocaust examines questions of human dignity and its role in medical ethics.
Wasserman’s first book, At Home on the Street (2010, with Jeffrey Michael Clair), provided a critical ethnographic exploration of street homelessness in Birmingham, Alabama. His second book, Social and Behavioral Science for Health Professionals (2021, with Brian Hinote), explored the various ways that sociological insights can be applied in clinical practice. Additionally, his scholarship has appeared in Pediatrics, JAMA Pediatrics, Social Science and Medicine, Bioethics, The American Journal of Bioethics, The Hastings Center Report, Journal of Medical Ethics, and The New England Journal of Medicine, among other venues.