- Titles:
- David & Lyn Silfen University Professor Emeritus
- Education:
- Washington University, PhD, Philosophy
- Hofstra University, BA, Philosophy & Psychology
Jonathan D. Moreno is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania.
Moreno is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a fellow of the Hastings Center, a member of the Philadelphia College of Physicians, a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, a faculty affiliate of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, and a member of the Committee on Human Rights of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.
Moreno was an Andrew W. Mellon post-doctoral fellow, holds an honorary doctorate f\rom Hofstra University, and is a recipient of the College of William and Mary Law School Benjamin Rush Medal, the Dr. Jean Mayer Award for Global Citizenship from Tufts University, the Penn Alumni Faculty Award of Merit, and was honorary Visiting Professor in History at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. In 2018 the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.
He has been a staff member or advisor to many governmental and non-governmental organizations, including three U.S. presidential commissions, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee. Moreno is a member of the Bayer Bioethics Council, the FujiFilm Life Sciences Bioethics Advisory Committee, and is a senior advisor for the Center for Health, Ethics and Society at the University of Hamburg, Germany. His work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Greenwall Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the U.S. Department of Defense. He was named an official “Mad Scientist” by the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command.
Moreno’s next book, Understanding Bioethics, will be published by Edward Elgar Publishing in 2027. Among Moreno’s previous books are Absolutely Essential: Bioethics and the Rules-Based International Order; Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die; Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans; and The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America, which was named Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews. His book Mind Wars formed part of the basis of The Bourne Legacy.
Moreno has published more than a thousand papers, articles, reviews and op-eds and has been translated into several languages. His writings have appeared in many venues, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Science, Nature, Slate, Politico, The Hill and Foreign Affairs. He was co-host of Making the Call, an Endeavor Content podcast, and was a columnist for ABCNews.com. As a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress he edited the online magazine Science Progress. In 2008-09 Moreno served on President Barack Obama’s transition team.
The American Journal of Bioethics has called him “the quietly most interesting bioethicist of our time.”