Dr. Glenn McGee describes his task this way: to show the connections between our moral lives, medicine and the biomedical sciences.  Dr. McGee has pioneered a theoretical approach to bioethics based on American pragmatism, and a number of novel approaches to new and perennial problems in medicine and the health sciences. He is the founding editor of The American Journal of Bioethics, the highest impact journal of science policy, health policy, bioethics, ethics and academic medicine, and has overseen the creation and editors of the AJOB family journals including AJOB Neuroscience and AJOB Primary Research.  He is also a bioethicist and a researcher who has published more than 200 essays, studies, reviews, and law review articles and six books, working across a disciplines.  

Glenn also founded The MIT Press’ bioethics book series. But first and foremost Dr. McGee is a researcher.  His work has included hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and essays in journals, law reviews, and other scholarly publications and books.  His work is often reprinted in textbooks, and his speeches have been printed in the Representative American Speeches volumes.

Dr. McGee has written in many areas of bioethics, including bioethics in emerging biotechnology, ethical issues in autism (link: May 8, 2009 talk on ethics and autism given at the Center for Practical Bioethics).  A number of his articles have had significant influence on the field of bioethics, including work in the areas of ethical issues in emergency research,  compensation of research subjects, models for parenting and enhancement, a pragmatic theory of bioethics, the patenting and sale of biological materials, ethical issues in tissue and gene banks, and ethical issues in stem cell research.  He has received more than $3 million in grant funding from the Greenwall Foundation, the US NIH, US Department of Education, Haas Foundation and others.

Dr. McGee has discussed bioethics, health and science policy on virtually every national news program in the U.S., in most English-language newspapers and magazines, and has been a guest on virtually every national NPR or BBC radio program, as well as Oprah, Larry King, Good Morning America, Today, and as a news analyst for MSNBC and currently for Headline News.

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS

Dr. McGee was Associate Director for Education at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, and assistant professor of medical ethics and of cellular and molecular engineering, from 1995-2005.  He was the first director of its Master of Bioethics program, pioneered Penn’s stem cell policy, and received several teaching and scholarly awards. 

In 2005, Dr. McGee founded the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Union University's Albany Medical College in New York, which the Governor commented “played an important role in developing the reputation of the state’s capital,” and for which he was named in 2008 as one of the ten most influential people in the Capital.  From 2005-2008, Professor McGee served as the John A. Balint, MD Endowed Chair of Medical Ethics and professor of medicine with tenure.

In 2009, McGee became the John B. Francis Endowed Chair in Bioethics at the Center for Practical Bioethics in Kansas City, Missouri, and director of its programs on Research Ethics and Life Sciences. He held these posts through 2011, when he was offered the opportunity to work in an stem cell ethics and policy executive position in Houston, Texas.

In 2011, following on his research in Texas' stem cell policy, he accepted the position of President, directing a Program on Ethics, of Celltex stem cell bank in Houston, shifting his focus to developing clinical trials, education, and ethical advancement of stem cell research and innovation. He also served (and serves) on other faculties in various capacities, including in public health, philosophy, nursing, medicine, and health economics. 

PUBLIC SERVICE

In 2005, McGee founded the nation’s first program devoted to Federalism and state issues in bioethics, with the Rockefeller Institute.  He was also appointed by the Director of the Wadsworth Institute of New York Department of Health as the first Chief of a state Office of Bioethics in 2005.  Dr. McGee has co-authored the text that became bills or stem cell legislation in four states, and cloning legislation in seven.  He has served on the Institutional Review Board for the State of Pennsylvania and the Newborn Genetics panel for the State of Kansas.

He has testified before the House and Senate and multiple committees of a number of states in the U.S.. He has taught bioethics to incoming members of the U.S. Congress and workshops on bioethics for the Association of Chief Justices of the US Courts of Appeals.  He serves on the FDA Panel on Molecular and Genetic Devices, and previously served on the equivalent body of New York State.  He coordinated research for the American Association for the Advancement of Science workshop on the regulation of human cloning.  He was the American external evaluator of all governmentally-funded genetics and policy programs of the United Kingdom in 2007.  He served on two National Human Genome Research Institute ELSI working groups, two working groups of the US Centers for Disease Control, and as US reviewer for national funding for ethics in genome sciences in Canada.

SPEAKING

McGee has delivered hundreds of named and plenary addresses to virtually every kind of audience, such as the Lent Lectureship at Kings College London, the Law & Technology Lectures at Yale Law School (twice), the Patterson Lectures at University of Texas Medical Branch, the John E. Hines Lectureship at Rutgers, the Tisherman Dean's Lecture on Stem Cell Ethics at the University of Pittsburgh, the ELAB Lectures of Harvard Law School, and symposia in public libraries, high schools, major industry organizations, patient advocacy groups, and others. He has organized a number of major conferences, most recently on politics and bioethics, a conference described by the president of bioethics‘ professional society as the “most important in 20 years.”  He has testified in more than 20 cases involving bioethics and in particular issues involving ethics and the family.

SERVICE TO THE PROFESSIONS

Dr. McGee has served as Director at Large of the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities. He was elected to serve as the first bioethicist on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood Federation of American, and served on: the National Advisory Board on Ethics in Reproduction, the bioethics advisory boards of Advanced Cell Technology, the American Bar Association bioethics group, Evan Donaldson Adoption Institute, American Heart Association, and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation Research Institute (clinical affairs advisory committee).

McGee sits on the editorial boards of 13 journals, the ethics committees of all major science and medical editors’ groups, and has co-edited reference books, reviewed dozens of manuscripts for publishers, and served as co-editor of an applied ethics encyclopedia. 

HONORS

McGee has been profiled in more than a dozen newspapers and magazines including The Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Times, Albany Times-Union and Philadelphia magazine. 

McGee has served as CEO of two not-for-profit organizations, director of a bioethics institute, and CEO of the AJOB and bioethics.net editorial offices, presently comprising more than a dozen staff. McGee was named to 40 under 40 of the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce in 2003, and of Albany Chamber of Commerce in 2005.  Albany Business Review described him in its May 20, 2008 issue as the “prototype” among leaders who accounted for Albany’s rise to #11 nationally among the “most educated metropolitan areas.”

McGee’s alma mater, Baylor, named him Outstanding Young Alumnus in 2000, and then in 2008 elected him to its list of the top 150 graduates in Baylor's history.  He received the lifetime achievement award from the Appignagni Humanist Foundation at the United Nations in 2006.  In 2006 McGee was named to the inaugural Google, Nature and O'Reilly (2006) Science Foo Camp.  He is one of the 2004 Seed magazine Third Culture, "scientists and thinkers who have a propensity for writing directly and very eloquently for the general public."

PERSONAL

Glenn McGee, 44, was born in Waco, Texas.  He has three sons, Ethan, Austin and Aidan McGee, is married to Summer McGee, Ph.D., and lives in Houston.