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Michael Parker

Michael Parker is Director of the Ethox Centre. He is also Professor of Bioethics at the University of Oxford and Honorary Clinical Ethicist at the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust, providing ethics support and education in the clinical setting, particularly in clinical genetics. Together with Tony Hope, he teaches medical ethics and law to the medical students in Oxford.

Mike is on a number of national and international committees. He is a director of the International Association of Bioethics, a member of the ethics committee of the Royal College of Physicians, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, Joint Series Editor of'Ethics in Practice' in the British Medical Journal, a founder member of the steering committee of the UK Clinical Ethics Network and, a founder member of the UK Genethics Club, a national forum for the discussion of ethical and social issues arising in the practice of clinical genetics. He is a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Maastricht and Groningen and is Visiting Fellow at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, University of Melbourne , Australia. He is also currently a member of Lord Warner's Ad Hoc Advisory Group on the future of research ethics committees.

Mike's main research interests are: the ethical issues raised by the use of genetics in the clinical setting, especially in the tensions arising in caring for both individual patients and their families; ethical issues in the health professional-patient relationship more widely, including the concept of'evidence-based patient choice'; and the ethical issues arising in research in genetics, both that on very rare conditions and also, genetic epidemiology using large scale genetic sample collections, and or patient records. He has written widely on ethical issues in genetics including: reproductive choice, confidentiality and responsibility to family members, the ethics of research on very rare inherited disorders, testing children and adolescents, the use of sample collections in genetic research and, the use of patient records in medical research without consent.

Mike is a member of the Board of the Oxford Genetics Knowledge Park and directs its multidisciplinary ethical, legal, psychological and social science research programme. This research is funded by the Departments of Health and of Trade and Industry. He has also, recently, with Jane Kaye and Andrew Smart received a major grant from the Wellcome Trust to carry out research on'Governing Genetic Databases'.

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