Robert Klitzman M.D.

Robert Klitzman, M.D., is a professor of clinical psychiatry and director of the Masters of Bioethics Program at Columbia University. A faculty member in the College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Joseph Mailman School of Public Health, he co-founded and for five years co-directed the Columbia University Center for Bioethics, and is the director of the Ethics and Policy Core of the HIV Center.

He has published seven books and over 80 journal articles and chapters on critical issues in bioethics including genetics, neuroethics, HIV prevention and treatment, research ethics, doctor-patient relationships, stigma and discrimination in health care, and other areas. His books include When Doctors Become Patients, A Year-Long Night: Tales of a Medical Internship, In a House of Dreams and Glass: Becoming a Psychiatrist, Being Positive: The Lives of Men and Women With HIV, Mortal Secrets: Truth and Lies in the Age of AIDS (with Ronald Bayer), Am I My Genes? Confronting Fate and Family Secrets in the Age of Genetic Testing, and The Ethics Police?: The Struggle to Make Human Research Safe, and most recently, Designing Babies: How Technology is Changing the Ways We Create Children.

Klitzman has received several grants from the National Institutes of Health, and numerous awards for his work, including fellowships from the Russell Sage Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, the Aaron Diamond Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He is a member of the Empire State Stem Cell Commission, and the Ethics Working Group of the HIV Prevention Trials Network, and was a member of the Dept. of Defense U.S. Army Research Ethics Advisory Panel. Klitzman is a regular contributor to the New York Times and has been widely interviewed about bioethical issues in the media.

Klitzman received an A.B. degree from Princeton University, an M.D. from Yale University, and was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.