Dr. Shahid Athar, M.D., F.A.C.E.

Staff physician (active) Department of Medicine, St. Vincent Hospital, Indianapolis, Indiana; consultant in Endocrinology/Internal Medicine.

Tenure:  December, 1999 - August, 2018

Dr. Athar, a U.S. citizen, was born at Patna, India. He did his medical training in Karachi, (Pakistan), Chicago, (Illinois), and at Indiana University.  From 1975 to 2006 he was he was Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine and then Clinical Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Endocrinology, Indiana University School of Medicine.

He was a member and former a regent and former elected vice-president of the Islamic Medical Association of North America, and was Chair of its Medical Ethics Committee.  Among other associations, he was a member of the Islamic Society of North America and Christians and Muslims for Peace (CAMP).  He was on the Board of Advisors of the International Association for Sufism.

Dr. Athar's most recent awards included the Indianapolis Medical Society's Gov. Otis Bowen Community Service Award for Physicians (2002), the Laureate Award(2007), from the American College of Physicians, Indiana Chapter, and the St.Vincent Hospital Distinguished Services Award (2008) and Distinguished Physician Award (2009).  Dr. Athar died in August, 2018.

Janet Ajzenstat, B.A., M.A., Ph.d

Former Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Tenure:  January, 2000 - August, 2010

Professor Ajzenstat taught public law, and political philosophy in the Department of Political Science at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario before retiring in 2001. Her most recent publication is a new edition of Documents on the Confederation of British North America (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009). A classic of Canadian history compiled in 1969 by G.P. Browne, it describes the process by which Sir John A. Macdonald and the Fathers of Confederation drafted the Canadian Constitution. This edition retains Browne's original Introduction with its lucid exposition of events from 1858 to 1867; a new Introduction by Janet Ajzenstat draws attention to the debt British North Americans owe to the political tradition of British liberal constitutionalism.

In 2009, Ajzenstat's The Canadian Founding, John Locke and Parliament (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007) won the Osgoode Society's John T. Saywell Prize for the best book on Canadian legal and constitutional history in 2007 and 2008. Other recent publications discuss issues of federalism and the reform of the Canadian Senate. Her blog, The Idea File (with word press) has a modest following. In 2002 she received the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal. [Blog: The Idea File]

John Fleming, BA, ThL (Hons), PhD

Former Director, Southern Cross Bioethics Institute,
Adelaide, Australia

Tenure: November, 1999 - March, 2010

Dr. John Irving Fleming, a bioethicist, was from 1987 to 2004 the director of the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute in Adelaide, South Australia, and from 2004 to 2009 President of Campion College Australia, which opened in 2006.  He continues a contractual relationship with the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute.

Dr. Fleming is former Dean and Vice-Master and St. Mark's College in the University of Adelaide.  His PhD thesis was titled Human Rights and Natural Law: An Analysis of the consensus gentium and its Implications for Bioethics.  Dr. Fleming is a former Anglican priest.  Married, with three children, a papal dispensation permitted his ordination in the Catholic Church (Diocese of Adelaide) in 1995.  He became a Corresponding Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life (Vatican) the following year.

From 1995-2004 Dr. Fleming was a member of the Advisory Board for the Centre for International and Cross-Cultural Studies, University of South Australia.  He was an elected delegate to the Australian Constitutional Convention in February, 1998.  He was also a member of the Aged Care Compliance and Accreditation Forum (Federal Government) from 200-2002 and Chair of the Working Group to develop a Code of Ethics and Guide to Ethical Conduct for the Aged Care Sector from 2000-2003.

Dr. Fleming was a member of UNIESCO's International Bioethics Committee from 1993-1996.  He was also a member of the South Australian Council on Reproductive Technology from 1998-2004, and a deputy member of the Medical Practitioners Professional Conduct Tribunal under Section 24 of the Medical Practitioners Act 1983 from 2000-2004.

Henk Jochemsen, PhD.

Director, Prof. dr. G.A. Lindeboom Institute,
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Tenure: -  April, 2000- March, 2010

Professor Henk Jochemsen (1952) studied Molecular Biology at the Agricultural University in Wageningen.  The work for his PhD thesis concerned a subject in pre-clinical cancer research at the State University in Leiden (1979).  From 1980-1986 he and his family pioneered in student work in Paraguay with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.  In addition to the student work, Professor Jochemsen  lectured in Molecular Biology at The National University in Asuncion for five years, and Christian Ethics at a Bible College in Asuncion for two years.

After his return to the Netherlands (1986) he became involved in the Prof. dr. G.A. Lindeboom Institute, a private centre for medical ethics that was being founded at that time.  He was director of that Institute from 1987 to 2009.  In that capacity he wrote and co-edited articles, reports and books, mainly in Dutch.  he has been a guest teacher of medical ethics at a theological college for several years and has given lectures on various medical ethical themes both in the Netherlands and at international conferences and courses.

 Professor Jochemsen is a member of the ethics commission of the Federation of Associations of Patients with Congenital Diseases, and advisor of a few other organizations in health care in the Netherlands.  From 1992-1996 he was a member of the Board of Administration of the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics.  Currently he is an Advisory Board member of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity (Trinity International University, Bannockburn, Illinois, USA) and a member of the European Editorial Board of 'Ethics and Medicince.'  He has held the Lindeboom chair for medical ethics at the Free University in Amsterdam since January, 1, 1998.

 Since the beginning of 1996, as a board member, Professor Jochemsen has coordinated the research at another private ethical institute, the Institute for Culture Ethics, at Amersfoort. His is a member of the Aid Commission of the Christian Reformed Churches in the Netherlandss.  He and his wife, Maricke Kok, have three children.

David Novak, AB, MHL, PhD

J. Richard and Dorother Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies, 
University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Tenure:  March, 2000 -  March, 2010

David Novak is Professor of the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, and also Professor of Philosophy, with appointments in University College, the Faculty of Law, the Joint Centre for Bioethics, and the Institute of Medical Science.  He is also Director of the Jewish Studies Programme.  from 1989 to 1997 he was the Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia.  He had taught previously at Oklahoma City University, Old Dominion University, the New School for Social Research, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the Baruch College of the City University of New York.  From 1966 to 1969 he was Jewish Chaplain to St. Elizabeth's Hospital, National Institute of Mental Health, in Washington, D.C.

After receiving a rabbinical diploma from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1966, he served as a pulpit rabbi in several American communities until 1989.  Professor Novak is a founder, vice-president and co-ordinator of the Panel of Inquiry on Jewish Law of the Union for Traditional Judaism.  He is also a founder of the Institute for Traditional Judaism in Teaneck, New Jersey, where he lectures frequently.  He serves as secretary-treasurer of the Institute of Religion and Public Life in New York, and is on the editorial board of its monthly journal, "First Things."  He is a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the Academy for Jewish Philosophy.

During the academic year 1992-93 he was a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.  In the fall of 1995 he was Distinguished Visiting Professor of Religion and Business Ethics at Drew University.  In February of the following year he delivered the Lancaster/Yarnton Lectures in Judaism and Other Religions at Oxford University and then at Lancaster University.  He has lecture throughout North America as well as in Israel, Europe and South Africa.

The author of eleven books and the editor of three, David Novak's articles appeared in numerous scholarly and intellectual journals.  His latest book, Covenental Rights, (2000) is published by Princeton University Press.  The Novaks have two grown children and two grandchildren.  They live in Toronto.

Lynn D. Wardle, J.D.

Professor of Law,  J. Reuben Clark Law School,  Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, U.S.A.

Tenure: December, 1999 - February, 2018

Professor Wardle joined the faculty of  the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University in 1978 and has taught Biomedical Ethics and  Law, Family Law, Conflict of Laws, Origins of the Constitution, and other subjects full-time ever since.   Most of Professor Wardle's writing relates to biomedical law, family law, and international and comparative law.  He is the lead coauthor and editor of a four-volume treatise, Contemporary Family Law (1988), the author or lead co-author of two other law books, and more than sixty other law review articles, chapters in law books, and other scholarly and professional publications.  He has written extensively about biomedical ethical issues, including abortion, euthanasia, and new reproductive technologies, family law, comparative and  international law, and conflict of laws.  He has testified before the Judiciary Committees or subcommittees of both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives regarding various biomedical policy issues and family law issues, and also before many state legislatures. [BYU Faculty Profile]