Duke University Professor Farr Curlin, M.D., has received the 2018 Paul Ramsey Award for Excellence from the national Center for Bioethics and Culture for demonstrating exemplary achievement in the field of bioethics.

Curlin is the Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities at the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine at Duke University and co-director of the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative at Duke Divinity School.

The Paul Ramsey Award honors those who have made an outstanding contribution to bioethics discussion and are actively engaged in society—facing the challenges of the 21st century, profoundly defending the dignity of humankind, and enthusiastically embracing ethical biotechnology for the human good. Ramsey is regarded by many as one of the most important ethicists of the 20^th century.

“Farr Curlin’s work both as clinician and moralist exemplifies nicely a theme accented in the writings of Paul Ramsey—namely, the way in which covenant fidelity marks the practice of medicine at its best,” said Gilbert Meilaender, Ph.D., of the Paul Ramsey Award Nominating Committee. “It would be hard to find a recipient of the Ramsey prize who better reflects that covenantal understanding of medicine.”