Carol Tauer is Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota and is currently Visiting Professor at the Center for Bioethics. She holds a PhD in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD in philosophy from Georgetown University with a concentration in bioethics. In 1990 she was chosen Minnesota Professor of the Year by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, a national organization that promotes excellence in college and university teaching.
In 1994 she was a member of the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel that was charged to make ethical recommendations for federal funding of research on infertility, preimplantation diagnosis, and stem cell research. In 1999 she was a member of the NIH Working Group on Pluripotential Stem Cell Research that developed specific ethical recommendations for federally funded human embryonic stem cell research. From 1997 to 2006 she served as ethicist for the Committee on Ethics of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Her publications include over sixty articles and book chapters on reproductive technologies, research involving children, HIV/AIDS and ethics, genetic testing, the moral status of the embryo and fetus, stem cell and cloning research, end-of-life treatment decisions, and physician-assisted suicide.