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Barbara A. Koenig, Ph.D., an anthropologist who studies contemporary biomedicine, is Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, MN, and Faculty Associate at the Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesota. Previously, she served as Executive Director of Stanford University 's Center for Biomedical Ethics, West Coast Research Coordinator for The Hastings Center, and was a member of the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco. She received her undergraduate degrees in history, magna cum laude, and nursing, with distinction, from the University of Minnesota. Her Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology was awarded by the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco joint program.
Koenig is one of a small number of anthropologists who works within the interdisciplinary field of bioethics. Her empirical bioethics research focuses on two areas: end-of-life care and the ethical, social, and political implications of new biomedical technologies, particularly those within the genomic sciences. Her past projects in end-of-life care have investigated topics such as how medical residents construct seriously ill patients as "dying," and the social negotiation of "routine" biomedical therapies. Later research explored issues of multi-culturalism in healthcare through the lens of end-of-life decision making, examining how the dilemmas of western bioethics are experienced in urban, inner-city American clinics and hospitals.
Koenig has a long-standing interest in the cultural context of biomedical innovation. She helped establish the Stanford Program in Genomics, Ethics, and Society, an endeavor devoted to multidisciplinary research, as well as policy analysis, of the challenges engendered by molecular genetics research. She conducted in-depth analyses of the social, ethical, and legal implications of DNA testing for breast cancer genes, as well as genetic testing for Alzheimer disease. Koenig served on the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary's Advisory Committee on Genetic Testing, a group charged with making recommendations about federal oversight of testing in the U.S. Koenig's ongoing NIH-funded research examines the ethical and policy implications of emerging knowledge in the genetics and neurobiology of addiction. In 2002 she organized the conference "Neuroethics: Mapping the Field," in San Francisco.
Koenig is an elected fellow of The Hastings Center and the Society for Applied Anthropology; she served on the executive boards of the American Association of Bioethics and the Society for Medical Anthropology. In 1998 she was awarded an individual residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study Center. Koenig was named a Faculty Scholar of the Open Society Institute's "Project on Death in America" in 1999. In 2002-03 she was a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center.