Donna Dickenson
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Donna Dickenson is an Anglo-American philosopher and ethicist. She was born in the New England region of the United States in 1946. She studied law and political science in Massachusetts and international relations in London. She worked for several years as a research associate at Yale University. In 1973 she left her native country because she disagreed with the government’s policy over Vietnam. She went to live in England, where she worked for over twenty years at the Open University. First establishing herself at a national level with an innovative course she chaired on death and dying. Since it was first presented in 1993, over 20,000 people have studied this course.
In 1989 she obtained her doctorate in philosophy with a study on moral luck in ethics and politics, first published under the title Moral Luck in Medical Ethics and Practical Politics. A much extended and elaborated version was published in 2003 as Risk and Luck in Medical Ethics. In 1997 she moved to Imperial College London as Leverhulme Reader in Medical Ethics and Law, and in 2001 to the University of Birmingham as John Ferguson Professor of Global Ethics, setting up a new interdisciplinary institute. In 2005 she returned to London to become Professor of Medical Ethics and Humanities at the University of London, where she directed the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. She also directed four international research projects for the European Commission, including the Network for European Women’s Rights.
Dickenson has written some twenty books and sixty articles on a wide range of subjects, including literary biographies, radio plays, poetry and a novel. She is a regular commentator in the media on issues in medical ethics and is completing a popular book on the subject: Body Shopping: Business, Bioethics and Human Tissue.
Recently Donna Dickenson has addressed questions concerning justice and bioethics research. Writing in the Dutch newspaper Trouw (14th February 2006), Eveline Brandt notes Dickenson’s interest in the treatment of research subjects, particularly in developing countries and Eastern Europe, by pharmaceutical firms. An increasingly important question is the use of tissue taken from women’s bodies for stem cell technology. Often she deals with vulnerable groups of people, including the dying, children and young people with critical illnesses, and psychiatric patients. She is struck by how little say they have in their own medical treatment.
In recognition of her work, she was awarded the prestigious international Spinoza Lens prize in 2006. Earlier recipients of this award were Edward Said (1999), Avishai Margalit in 2002 and Tzvetan Todorov in 2004. On the occasion of the prize, an appreciation of her comprehensive contribution was published as Donna Dickenson—Lichaam en eigendom (Body and Property). A lengthy review article appeared in the Belgian newspaper De Morgen (9th January 2007) drawing attention to her analysis of future trends in the new biotechnologies.
Since the Spinoza award she has brought out a major new book, Property in the Body: Feminist Perspectives (Cambridge University Press: 2007).
Categories: American author/ Legal scholar/American philosopher/Medical ethicist.
Website: www.donnadickenson.net
