Edmund Pellegrino Quotes

United States, Professor
June 22, 1920 – June, 13, 2013.

Edmund Daniel Pellegrino was an American bioethicist and academic who served as the 11th president of The Catholic University of America from 1978 to 1982. For 35 years, Pellegrino was a distinguished professor of medicine and medical ethics and the Director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. Pellegrino was an expert both in clinical bioethics, and in the field of medicine and the humanities, specifically, the teaching of humanities in medical school, which he helped pioneer. He was the second layman to hold the position of President of Catholic University.

“For patients to claim a right to any procedures they wish is to challenge a conscientious physician’s integrity as a physician.”

Edmund Pellegrino
- Claim
- Patients
- Physician
“Autonomy is absolutized in principle and practice. This may lead to the second response, namely, that physicians will accede to whatever the patient or valid surrogate wants. This prompts the physician to transfer all responsibility to patients, family, or friends. This occurs with alarming frequency in the care of infants, the elderly, and demented patients who may be over- or under-treated because their surrogates demand it. Indeed,”

Edmund Pellegrino

“However, family and friends can be in a financial or emotional conflict of interest with the welfare of an incompetent patient.”

Edmund Pellegrino