Michael A. Grodin, MD

Grodin Name

Department

Psychiatry

Biosketch

Michael Alan Grodin, M.D., the descendant of four generations of Rabbis and Jewish Educators, is Director of the Medical Ethics and Human Rights Programs at Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health, where he is also a Professor of Psychiatry, Family Medicine, Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights. He is Co-Director of the joint project in Jewish Legal Bioethics of the Institute of Jewish Law at the Boston University School of Law. He is a member of the Senior Faculty and Director of the Medicine and the Holocaust Project of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies and a member of the faculty of the Division of Religious and Theological Studies at the Boston University College of Arts and Sciences. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. He has been on the faculty of Boston University for the past 32 years and has received numerous teaching awards including the Norman Scotch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Professor Grodin teaches “Jewish Bioethics” at Boston University and has served as a consultant for Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Reform rabbis as well as Christian theologians in the areas of medicine and Jewish law. Professor Grodin has taught a course entitled “Religion, Medicine and Public Health Policy” which is the only one of its kind in a School of Public Health in the United States. Professor Grodin has also taught courses on “Birth, Life and Death in Jewish Law. In addition, Dr. Grodin is the faculty advisor to the Maimonides Society of the Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Grodin is a certified Mohel.

He has received advanced training in Psychoanalysis, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Trauma Therapy, Hypnotherapy, EMDR, Behavioral Medicine, Supportive Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy, Positive Psychology, Mind Body Medicine, Sensori-Motor Psychotherapy, Internal Energy Arts, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Acupuncture, and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Dr. Grodin is Co-Founder of Global Lawyers and Physicians: Working Together for Human Rights, Co-Director of the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights and has received a special citation from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in recognition of his “profound contributions – through original and creative research – to the cause of Holocaust education and remembrance.” Dr. Grodin was the 2000 Julius Silberger Scholar and is an elected member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and the American Psychoanalytic Association. Three times named one of America’s Top Physicians, he has received 4 national Humanism in Medicine and Humanitarian Awards for “integrity, clinical excellence and compassion”, “outstanding humanism in medicine and integrity as a faculty member” and “compassion, empathy, respect and cultural sensitivity in the delivery of care to patients and their families.” Dr. Grodin has delivered over 400 invited national and international addresses, written more than 200 scholarly papers, and edited or co-edited 5 books: The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation, Children as Research Subjects: Science, Ethics and Law, Meta-Medical Ethics: The Philosophical Foundations of Bioethics, Health and Human Rights: A Reader selected as 2nd of the top 10 humanitarian books of 1999, Perspectives on Health and Human Rights. Professor Grodin has authored manuscripts on Jewish medical ethics for the Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy, The Journal of Clinical Ethics, Journal of Church and State, Conservative Judaism, and on the teaching of religion, medicine and public health. He is in the process of publishing two new books: Jewish Physicians and Allied Health Professionals in the Ghettos and Camps during the Holocaust and a textbook on Health and Human Rights.

Academic Interests

Dr. Grodin’s primary areas of interest include: Jewish Law, Medicine and the Holocaust, Bioethics, Human Rights and Integrative Medicine. Finally, Dr. Grodin has been involved through the legislative process in clarifying the proper role of religious traditions in contemporary medical ethical discourse.