Bio
Jonathan H. Marks is Professor of Bioethics, Humanities, and Law at The Pennsylvania State University.
Dr. Marks leads a collaborative research project that is jointly funded by the Rock Ethics Institute and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics (through its Lab on Institutional Corruption), exploring the ethical and policy implications of industry sponsorship of health-related food research, nutrition education, and practice. Marks has co-organized—with Donald B. Thompson, emeritus professor of food science at Penn State—a workshop sponsored by the Rock Ethics Institute on “The Ethical Challenges and Policy Implications of Industry-Funded Health-Related Food Research,” a symposium entitled “Industry Sponsorship and Health-Related Food Research Institutional Integrity, Ethical Challenges, and Policy Implications,” and the Rock Ethics Institute’s Food Ethics Lecture Series. He took the lead role in developing Penn State’s new dual-title Ph.D. program in bioethics (the first of its kind in the country) that allows and requires students to combine bioethics with one of a number of other disciplines in their dissertation.
Marks has published widely on the intersections of law, ethics, human rights, and policy, and his work has appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, American Journal of Law and Medicine, American Journal of Bioethics, and the Hastings Center Report. He has also authored or co-authored op-eds for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Times (London). In addition to his work on food ethics, he writes about, teaches courses, and has co-organized an international conference on neuroethics and neurolaw. He has also written extensively about the role of health professionals in detention and interrogation in the “war on terror”—part of an ongoing larger project that explores the relationship between professional ethics and human rights.
Marks is also a barrister and academic member of Matrix Chambers, London. While in full time legal practice, he was involved in a number of landmark cases including the Pinochet case and the Olivieri case—the latter arising from a dispute between a physician-researcher and the drug company sponsor of her clinical trials.
Dr. Marks was formerly the Associate Director of the Rock Ethics Institute, Director of the Bioethics Program, and the Edmond J. Safra Faculty Fellow in Ethics at Harvard University. Prior to joining Penn State, was a Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities.