Dr. Robinson is a pediatric pulmonologist at Boston Children's Hospital. And the Associate Director of the Division of Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, where he runs the Medical Ethics Fellowship and the Program in the Practice of Scientific Investigation.
He received his BA in Philosophy at Princeton University, his MD from Emory University, and his MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health. He was a Fellow in the Program in Ethics and the Professions at the Kennedy School of Government in 1994-95 and 1998-99.
He is actively involved in the CF clinic at Children's Hospital, where he also serves as associate ethicist in the Office of Ethics. Dr. Robinson's academic interests focus on the ethical issues that arise in chronic illness, organ transplantation, and clinical research.
I'm getting the feeling that the main reason that ivory-tower ethics programs exist, is to convince ordinary people, like me, that immoral actions are really ethical actions.
I remember when ethics programs began to sprout up. They were supposed to be the new way to promote morality, without promoting particular religions. We were told that things were much too complex in this modern world and we needed to have experts tell us right from wrong. The simple old idea of decent behavior toward each individual would no longer do.
The ethics-hucksters have thrown out the baby with the bathwater and have left us with a chipped and rusty basin.