Interfaculty Centre for Bioethics and Medical Humanities Interfaculty Centre for Bioethics and Medical Humanities

Samia Hurst is a physician bioethicist, consultant to the Clinical Ethics Council of the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), director of the Institute for Ethics, History, Humanities (IEH2) and the Department of Health and Community Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Geneva. Former president of the Swiss Society of Biomedical Ethics, she publishes the journal Bioethica Forum. She is also Vice-President of the Executive Committee of CIOMS, and a member of the Ethical Legal Social Issues advisory group of the Swiss Personalised Health Network, the Swiss National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics and the Senate of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences.

Before joining the Institute of Biomedical Ethics of the Faculty of Medicine of Geneva, she was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda from 2001 to 2003. She was a founding member of the European Clinical Ethics Network, and co-organizes the Brocher Summer Academies in the Ethics of Global Population Health with Harvard University.

Very active in public discussions, she works with various media on issues related to bioethics. She maintains the "Bio-ethics" blog, one of the only ones to deal with these issues in French. Every two years, she co-organises the virtual conference "Resisting borders", which brings together researchers and activists on issues related to the rights of refugees and migrants without participants having to cross borders.

RESEARCH

Ethical issues in clinical practice,

Health policy ethics, in particular issues related to equity and the protection of vulnerable persons

Ethical issues in personalized medicine

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Articles

• Fitzgerald C, Martin A, Berner D, Hurst SA: Interventions designed to reduce implicit prejudices and implicit stereotypes in real world contexts: a systematic review. BMC Psychology. 2019;7:29
• Hurst SA, Zellweger U, Bosshard G, Bopp M : Medical end-of-life practices in Swiss cultural regions : a death certificate study. BMC Medicine. 2018; 16(1):54
• Tavaglione N, Martin A, Mezger N, Durieux S, François A, Jackson Y, Hurst SA: Fleshing out vulnerability. Bioethics. 2015;29(2):98-107
• Tilburt J, Wynia M, Sheller RD, Thorsteinsdottir B, James K, Egginton JS, Liebow M, Hurst SA, Danis M, Goold SD: Conflicted and Divided: US Physicians' Views on Addressing Health Care Costs. JAMA. 2013:310(4):380-8. ABIM Foundation 2014 Professionalism Article Prize
• Ilic N, Auchlin A, Hadengue A, Wenger A, Hurst SA: Informed consent forms in oncology research: linguistic tools identify recurrent pitfalls. American Journal of Bioethics – Primary research. 2013 ; 4(4):39-54
• Hurst SA., Mauron A.; A Question of Method: the Ethics of Managing Conflicts of Interest. EMBO Reports. 2008, 9(2), pp 119-123 

Books

• Danis M, Fleck L, Forde R, Hurst SA, Slowther AM: Toward Fair Rationing at the Bedside. Oxford University Press. 2014.
• Eyal N, Hurst SA, Norheim O, Wikler D : Health Inequalities - Concept, Measures, Ethics. Oxford University Press. 2014.
• The complete list is available on the University of Geneva’s Open Archive

SELECTED TALKS

• Complicity in clinical ethics consultation. International Conference on Clinical Ethics and Consultation. Vienna. 2019
• Conscientious objection and medical duties in case of suicide assistance requests. International Conference on Clinical Ethics and Consultation. Oxford. 2018
• What is vulnerability ? Keynote. Annual Meeting of the Canadian Bioethics Society. 2017
• Helping medical students develop a deeper understanding of truth-telling. Keynote.  First Chinese University of Hong Kong – Medical Education Conference (CU-MEC) 2017