Modern Bioethics & Innovative Bioethics Forum
Anne Zimmerman, JD, MS, CIPP-US (Certified Information Privacy Professional), CEET (Certified Ethical Emerging Technologist), is the Founder of Modern Bioethics; Chair of the New York City Bar Association Bioethical Issues Committee; Editor-in-Chief of Voices in Bioethics (Columbia University journal and podcast); Advisory Board Member, Columbia University Master of Science in Bioethics Program; Co-Chair, AI and Healthcare Subcommittee of the New York City Bar Association Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies; Co-Founder and Chair of the Innovative Bioethics Forum; Consultant to MyBioethics (ed-tech app); a Spring 2023 Colorado College Innovator in Residence; and a mentor for All Tech Is Human. Interests include law and bioethics, tech and AI ethics, ethics of nutrition and wellness, and criminal justice reform.
Her book, Medicalization: An Encroachment on Consent, Culture, examines the phenomenon of medicalization and the increasingly large, invasive, and coercive role of medicine in society. Medicine today impinges territory formerly left to families, parents, society, and social and economic policy. Expanding disease definitions and allowing ever-milder conditions to qualify for medicine, ‘disease creep’ influences public policy and social behavior. Medicalization redirects those experiencing stress, sadness, or distraction to medicine, and impacts how society defines health and wellness. Medicalization impacts diet, lifestyle, education, and mental and physical health and wellness. From cosmetic surgery to drugs, convincing the population of its inherent sickness is big business. Medicalization focuses on informed consent and the idea of simply ‘going along’ with medicine. The e-book is available on Google Play.
Her previous book, Medicine, Power, and the Law: Exploring a Pipeline to Injustice explores the relationships between medicine, science, and technology and the criminal and civil justice systems.
Innovative Bioethics Forum analyzes ethical issues and engages in group writing projects in general bioethics and AI and tech ethics. Her body of scholarship analyzes relationships between public policy and fairness, health and wellness, and autonomy, with an emphasis on human and US constitutional rights. Her prior experience includes corporate governance, criminal justice reform, and nutrition counseling with a focus on policy surrounding access to a healthy food supply. She is active in fundraising for Cycle for Survival and an avid supporter of research for rare cancer. Her professional memberships include ASBH, New York State Bar Association, New York City Bar Association, APPE, and the Citizen Science Association. https://www.linkedin.com/in/anneszimmerman/ https://modernbioethics.com/publications/ (publications)
Mission
Modern Bioethics is simply a blog and website designed to promote critical thinking and common sense in the bioethics arena and to challenge the bioethics status quo. The learning modules include frameworks to promote reasoning, critical thinking, and may challenge some current views and practices. As an exercise to humbly promote thinking, the lessons and blog posts often do not offer conclusions. They focus on analysis. These lessons and the factors, considerations, and reasoning, are theoretical foremost.
Disclaimer
Nothing on this website is meant to convey legal or medical advice. This website is for promoting thinking, learning, entertainment, and information. Relationships with readers do not comprise an attorney-client relationship. Despite significant efforts to avoid errors, it is possible that the website contains errors or mistakes.
For full disclosure, I am the parent of a five-time cancer survivor. Where relevant, some of the person-centered and dignity approaches might reflect my experiences and my mission to ensure that the voice of the disenfranchised or less powerful has a place in the ethical landscape.
Copyright
All blog posts, lessons, quizzes, infographics, and other written materials created for this website are subject to copyright under creative commons CC-BY-NC. Credit must be given to the creator and only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted (unless expressly authorized).
