Samuel Gorovitz, professor of philosophy and former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, was interviewed for an oral history project on bioethics produced by Johns Hopkins University’s Berman Institute of Bioethics. Titled Moral Histories, the collection serves as a resource for understanding the creation and formation of the field, which involves the study of ethical, social and legal issues within biomedicine and biomedical research. In the eight hours of interviews, Gorovitz spoke about what sparked his interest in medical ethics, philosophical questions that shaped the field, and his ongoing work as an ethicist and educator.

A pioneer of medical ethics, Gorovitz has published extensively on this and other topics and has given more than 200 invited lectures on health policy. He has also been interviewed on programs including NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Larry King Live,” and has been quoted in The New York Times, The New Yorker and other magazines and newspapers.

Gorovitz was interviewed along with 14 other pioneers of bioethics for the collection, which is designed to inform policy makers, health care professionals, researchers, students and the general public with an interest in medicine and ethics. Among the renowned scholars interviewed is Arthur L. Caplan, who wrote the foreword for Gorovitz’s new book Illuminating Philosophy: Stories Beyond Boundaries (Prospecta Press, 2023).

Explore Gorovitz’s Moral Histories page.