Timothy Furlan, Ph.D, an emerging voice in the field of bioethics, has been named senior editor for Pediatric Ethicscope, a rigorous, peer-reviewed journal affiliated with Harvard Medical School and dedicated to pediatric ethics. The Harvard Fellow and current Burnett Family Distinguished Chair in Ethical Leadership at University of St. Thomas – Houston will be reviewing manuscripts and helping to shape, form and disseminate some of the best thinking today on the most important issues in the field.

The former editor for the Harvard Bioethics Journal said, “I am very grateful for this opportunity to contribute to Pediatric Ethicscope, which is the oldest and arguably one of the best journals of its kind in the world. Also, I look forward to collaborating again with Stowe Locke Teti, a colleague I worked with previously on the Harvard Bioethics Journal.”

Many of the top pediatric ethics scholars in the world sit on the Pediatric Ethicscope editorial board. The publication receives submissions from various sources: medical doctors, researchers, clinicians, philosophers and social scientists.

Furlan foresees the journal continuing to be of use to clinicians and scholars and to a wide array of readers, including families who face these challenging dilemmas.

“There has been an explosion of interest in bioethics in the last 50 years,” Furlan said. “Pediatric ethics, which has become a vast field of its own, reveals that it isn’t just an adaptation — a ‘smaller size’ bioethics — rather, in many ways, pediatric ethics raises very different, and sometimes significantly more complicated and difficult questions.”

Bioethical quandaries involving children are some of the most challenging in the field. Furlan looks forward to sharing his work with undergraduates and graduate students at UST’s Center for Thomistic Studies.

“My work in clinical ethics continues to deeply inform my teaching of ethical theory and bioethics and manifests daily in my teaching,” he explained. “I think there will be many opportunities for students to serve as interns or editorial assistants, and being able to work on a world-class bioethics journal and engage with these pressing contemporary ethical questions will be an invaluable experience.”

Above all, Furlan hopes that the published work can manifest practical wisdom and offer concrete action, guidance and solace to clinicians, ethics committee members and especially families as they face these very important decisions.