Campus Statue at Healy Hall, Georgetown University

Welcome to the Edmund D. Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics

The PCCB faculty and staff pledge solidarity with social movements like Black Lives Matter and with Georgetown leadership who are seeking to promote justice and to address systemic racism and discrimination.  Read more

Edmund D. Pellegrino
Founding Director Edmund D. Pellegrino, MD
(June 22, 1920 – June 13, 2013)
Portrait by Jerry Crowley

The Pellegrino Center provides university-based ethics resources for individuals who shape and give health care. We are committed to the dynamic interplay between theory and practice, experience, and reflection. Center scholars bring expertise in theology, philosophy, basic science, and clinical practice to today’s ethical challenges. We seek to promote serious ethical reflection and discourse in pursuit of a just society and health care that affirms the dignity and social nature of all persons.


News and Announcements


The 2025 Pellegrino Symposium

Headshot of Professor Jim Giordano

Mens moralis mentis: Professor James Giordano
and Two Decades of Neuroethics at Georgetown
Friday, February 14, 2025 at 3 pm via Zoom
More information and registration

The PCCB is co-sponsoring a conference February 27-28 at Catholic University of America here in Washington, DC on “Integrity in the Concept and Determination of Brain Death.”  Speakers include PCCB faculty members Allen H. Roberts II, MD, M.Div., MA ; Daniel P. Sulmasy, MD, PhD ; and Sarah B. Vittone, RN, MA, MSN, DBe, HEC-C . More information and registration

March 13 from 9:30 – 11:30 am (hybrid): “Neural Transformation and Digital Intervention: Rethinking Maternal Health Research” with Dr. Maria Kuhn, German Fulbright Foundation Fellow at the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics More information and registration

Save the date: Wednesday, April 2, 2025, 4-6 pm, in person. As part of Georgetown’s new Emergent Ethics Network, the PCCB will co-host the Network’s first Distinguished Lecture by internet pioneer Vint Cerf, who sill speak on ethical issues at the intersection of bioethics, environmental justice, and the ethics of digital technology. Learn more

PCCB faculty member Joel Michael Reynolds, an associate professor of philosophy and disability studies at Georgetown University in Washington, presided over a Jan. 8 Catholic Health Association webinar titled “The Health of People with Disabilities: Addressing Ableism and Disparities in the Clinic.”

More News and Announcements



 COVID-19 Resources

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Center for Clinical Bioethics Programs


cover image for 'Your Health: A Sacred Matter'

Your Health: A Sacred Matter

Watch this public television documentary on spirituality, religion, and medicine. Earn two free credits of CME/CEU for watching the entire film.

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