Farr A. Curlin, MD, is Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities in the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and History of Medicine, and the Duke Divinity School, at Duke University. Before moving to Duke in 2014, he founded and was Co-Director of the Program on Medicine and Religion at the University of Chicago. At Duke, Farr practices palliative medicine and works with colleagues in the Trent Center and the Divinity School’s Initiative on Theology, Medicine, and Culture to develop opportunities for study and scholarship at the intersection of theology, ethics and medicine. He is interested in the moral and spiritual dimensions of medical practice—particularly the doctor-patient relationship, the moral and professional formation of physicians, and practices of care for patients at the end of life.
Dr. Curlin’s empirical research charts the influence of physicians' moral traditions and commitments, both religious and secular, on physicians' clinical practices. As an ethicist he addresses questions regarding whether and in what ways physicians' religious commitments ought to shape their clinical practices in our plural democracy. With respect to the latter, he is particularly concerned with the moral and spiritual dimensions of medical practice, clinical decision-making, and the doctor-patient relationship, as well as with moral and professional formation in medical education. Dr. Curlin has co-authored more than forty manuscripts published in the medicine and bioethics literatures, including a New England Journal of Medicine paper titled, “Religion, Conscience and Controversial Clinical Practices.” Dr. Curlin was a Fellow with The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity from 2010-2018.
