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Kenneth A Richman, PhD
Bio
I am a philosopher and bioethicist at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (officially known as MCPHS University) in Boston. My title is Professor of Philosophy and Health Care Ethics, and I am a member of the MCPHS Center for Health Humanities. I am also affiliated with the Boston University Department of Philosophy, where I have been a Visiting Researcher, advised an MA thesis, and where I teach summer courses.  In Spring 2016 I was a Visiting Scholar at the Neuroethics Research Unit of the Institut de Recherche Clinique de Montreal, pursuing work on the ELSITA Project (see "current research" link above). For the first half of 2017, I continued this work at the Gothenburg Responsibility Project of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. My work in Sweden was made possible by a sabbatical award from MCPHS and generous support from the Miriam Foundation of Montreal.

I have also been a consultant and speaker for the cosmetics and personal products industry.  My work in this area has focused on identifying ethical liability in research practices, especially involving human research participants. I have given talks to industry meetings on a variety of other topics, including explanation in proteomic science, ethics and product claims, and ethical issues raised by artificial intelligence and machine learning applications in healthcare.

My published work explores the philosophy of medicine and bioethics, including research ethics, as well as early modern philosophy and the philosophy of education. More recently, I have been writing about ethics and autism.  For 10 years, I worked with social scientists to examine ethics in the practice of community-based research. I chair the Institutional Review Board at MCPHS and have served on IRBs at Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and at Bryn Mawr College.

I have held faculty appointments at Kalamazoo College and Bryn Mawr College, and have been affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics and the Interactivity Foundation, a public policy think tank.  I have provided expert bioethics commentary for Spectrum News, Channel 6 Boston (ABC), Comcast Cablevision and regional newspapers.

At MCPHS I teach philosophy and bioethics to students taking degrees such as a doctor of pharmacy (PharmD), a master’s degree in physician assistant studies, or a BS in health psychology.

Outside of work, I am a serious amateur musician. I enjoy playing clarinet chamber music, and (pandemics allowing) sing in the Brookline A Capella Chorus.
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New co-authored paper!
Consciousness as a Memory System In press at Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology.

Recent and upcoming presentations
I have chaired several talks for the MCPHS Center for Health Humanities. You can watch them here.

Ethics of Big Data I: Policy Values for Implementing Today’s Data Technology in Healthcare Systems
and Ethics of Big Data II: Values and Today’s Data Technology in Pharmacy Practice (Invited workshops with Maritza Lew).  Summer Meetings, American Society of Health Systems Pharmacists (ASHP). June 2022.


​Ethics of Big Data (Invited talk with Maritza Lew). Midyear Clinical Meeting, American Society of Health Systems Pharmacists (ASHP). Online, December 2021.

The 'Is' and 'Ought' of Neurodiversity (Panel with Robert Chapman, Ryan Nelson, Jerome Wakefield, and David Wasserman). Annual Meeting, American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. Online, October 2021.


Autism: Disorder, Disability, or Mere Difference? (Invited Symposium with Jerome Wakefield, David Wasserman, and Robert Chapman) Eastern Division, American Philosophical Society, 14 January 2021.

Recent and Upcoming Publications
Richman, K. A., Krause-Jensen, K., & Rodogno, R. Autism, criminal justice, law enforcement, and transition to adulthood. In N. Elster & K. Parsi (Eds.) Transitioning to adulthood with autism: Ethical, legal and social issues. (March 2022) Springer Nature.

Beliefs, hopes, and deal breakers in research consent: Dissecting Mathews, Fins, and Racine on the therapeutic misconception. (2021) Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 30(2) 384-389.

Neurodiversity and autism advocacy: who fits under the autism tent? (2020) The American Journal of Bioethics, 20(4), 33-34.
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