The Journal Loses Its Founding Editor

Abstract

Edmund Daniel Pellegrino, the founding editor of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, died on June 13, 2013. He served as editor from 1976 to 1984. The journal came into existence through his vision, energy, and direction; it would never have existed without Edmund D. Pellegrino. Dr. Pellegrino was also one of the founders of contemporary bioethics, philosophy of medicine as it is now known, and medical humanities. He shaped the emergence and development of these fields. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy mourns his passing. At his death, Edmund Pellegrino was 92 years old; he would have turned 93 on June 22. He was preceded in death by his wife of 67 years, Clementine, who passed away the previous June. He is survived by five children, two grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. His son Stephen died in 1980, and his son Thomas passed away in 2011. Pellegrino was born in 1920 in Newark, New Jersey, received his bachelor’s degree from St. John’s University in New York City, and his MD from New York University. He was the recipient of 54 honorary degrees. He served residencies in medicine at Bellevue, Goldwater Memorial, and Homer Folks Tuberculosis Hospitals; afterward, he was a research fellow in renal medicine and physiology at New York University Medical Center. Dr. Pellegrino, who developed medical programs at the University of Kentucky, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the University of Tennessee, was the first president of the Yale-New Haven Medical Center. In 1978, he was appointed professor of clinical medicine and community medicine at Georgetown University and also that year became the 11th president of The Catholic University of America, serving from 1978 to 1982. Dr. Pellegrino was a former director of Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics, and he founded and directed the university’s Center for Clinical Bioethics, which just this year was renamed the Edmund D. Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics in his honor. From 2005 to 2009, he served as chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics. Pellegrino was the author of more than 600 published articles in medicine, philosophy, and ethics and author or coauthor of 23 books. A selection from his papers is available through the University of Notre Dame Press (2008): The Philosophy of Medicine Reborn: A Pellegrino Reader.