The Bioethics Leadership Award recognizes an established bioethicist who has both contributed significantly to the development of the Centre for Health Care Ethics and to the discipline of bioethics/health care ethics itself through leadership in research, education or public service.  Created in the tenth anniversary year of CHCE, the first recipient of this award is Dr. Peter A. Singer, MD, MPH, FRCPC, FRSC, Director and Professor of Medicine, McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health, University Health Network and past Director, Joint Centre for Bioethics, University of Toronto.

 

Dr. Singer was chosen to receive this award "in recognition of his contribution to our Centre and to the discipline of bioethics.  He was instrumental in the creation of our Centre in 1998 and has supported it for the past 10 years.  He built the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics into one of the largest organisations of its kind in the world.  Dr. Singer created a comprehensive multidisciplinary program of bioethics education.  He made many original scholarly contributions to this field and proved that bioethics research is capable of attracting multimillion dollar grants."

 

The award was presented at Lakehead University on January 14, 2009, by Dr. Laurie Hayes, Vice-President (Academic) and Provost, on the occasion of Dr. Singer's return to Thunder Bay as a visiting speaker of CHCE's Encounters in Bioethics program.  Following the ceremony, Dr. Singer spoke on "From Lab to Village:  Bioethics and Global Health".