Rebecca Dresser, JD

Co-Director, Center for Clinical Research Ethics, Washington University Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences

Rebecca Dresser is the Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law and Professor of Ethics in Medicine at Washington University in St Louis. She regularly teaches courses on research ethics, both in the Washington University School of Law and the University's Medical 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.

For more information on Rebecca Dresser, complete contact information and her research in other areas of law and ethics, please see her faculty bio page here.