Rebecca Walker, Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Medicine and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department, specializes in bioethics. Her work to date has focused on: concepts of autonomy in bioethics, the ethics of how we treat non-human animals, the allocation of health care resources, and ethics methods within ELSI (the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Human Genome Project). Sample publications include: "Morality and the Limits of Societal Preferences in Health Care Allocation," (with Andrew Siegel in Health Economics 2002), “Human and Animal Subjects of Research: The Moral Significance of Respect versus Welfare,” (Journal of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 2006), Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems (Co-edited with Philip Ivanhoe, Oxford University Press, 2007), “Medical Ethics Needs a New View of Autonomy” (Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 2009), and “Respect for Rational Autonomy” (Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, forthcoming).
After completing a post-doctoral fellowship in Bioethics and Health Policy at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities (sponsored by the Greenwall Foundation) in 2001, Dr. Walker served as Project Director for the Life Sciences, Values and Society Program and Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She took up her present position in the Departments of Social Medicine and Philosophy at UNC in July of 2003. In Philosophy, Dr. Walker teaches ethics and bioethics to undergraduate and graduate students. In Social Medicine, she teaches the Medicine and Society course for first year medical students and a course on Biomedical Research Ethics for MD/PhD students and other second year medical students. At UNC, Dr. Walker is a member of the Core Leadership Committee for the Hospital Ethics Committee, a co-investigator in the Center for Genomics and Society, and a fellow in the Parr Center for Ethics. She also serves on the advisory board for the Policy, Ethics, and Law core of the Southeast Regional Center of Excellence for Emerging Infections and Biodefense.
