Past APA President Paul Appelbaum, M.D., receives the AMA's 2007
Isaac Hays, M.D., and John Bell, M.D., Award for Leadership in Medical Ethics
and Professionalism at last month's meeting of the AMA House of Delegates in
Honolulu.FIG1
Next to Appelbaum is Barbara Rockett, M.D., president of the AMA
Foundation Board of Directors, who presented the award to Appelbaum at the
opening session of the House of Delegates.
Rockett noted that through theoretical and empirical studies on informed
consent—including decisional capacity—Appelbaum has helped define
the ethical parameters of medical practice. His current research focuses on
defining constraints on voluntariness in patients' consent to research,
developing better approaches to informed consent, and exploring the role of
coercion in psychiatric care.
Appelbaum is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine,
and Law and director of the Division of Psychiatry, Law, and Ethics in the
Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and
Surgeons, as well as a faculty associate at the Columbia University Center for
Bioethics. In 2000 Appelbaum was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the
National Academy of Sciences.