About the Surgical Ethics Working Group

The Surgical Ethics Working Group (SEWG) is an established group of surgeons who meet weekly to discuss current ethical dilemmas as well as collaborate on projects with the goal of improving the ethics associated with clinical care, specifically surgical care. SEWG is committed to bridging the gap in conversation on medical ethics between the medical community and the public. Representing a diverse range of race, age, gender, and specialty, each SEWG member offers unique perspectives and opinions to the conversation surrounding medical ethics. SEWG hopes that by engaging in the conversation now, better patient care and satisfaction will ensure within the healthcare environment.

SEWG Faculty & Staff

Theresa Williamson

Theresa Williamson, MD

Co-Chair, Surgical Ethics Working Group, HMS Center for Bioethics

Faculty Neurosurgeon, Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School

MGH Profile

Douglas Hanto

Douglas W. Hanto, MD, PhD, MBE

Co-Chair, Surgical Ethics Working Group, HMS Center for Bioethics

Lewis Thomas Professor of Surgery Emeritus, Harvard Medical School

Member, HMS Center for Bioethics

617-281-2349

John Edmund Mayer Jr.

John Edmund Mayer Jr., MD

Senior Associate in Cardiac Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital

Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Fellow in Bioethics

617-355-8258

Martin McKneally

Martin F. McKneally, PhD, MD

Founding Chair and Member of the Surgical Ethics Group, Senior Associate, Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics

Lecturer on Surgery, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Professor Emeritus of Surgery, Member of the Joint Centre for Bioethics, University of Toronto

781-922-0861

Richard Whyte

Richard Whyte, MD, MBA

Vice Chair of Quality Safety and Clinical Affairs, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

617-632-8140

Douglas Brown, PhD
Douglas Brown, PhD
Brandi Braud Scully, MD, MS
Brandi Braud Scully, MD, MS
Dane Paneitz, MD, MPH
Dane Paneitz, MD, MPH
Taylor Mitchell, BS
Taylor Mitchell, BS
Lucy Jefferson, MD
Lucy Jefferson, MD

SEWG Publications & Research Projects

Works by Dr. John Mayer

  1. Painting a Vivid Picture: Persuasion versus Manipulation in the Consent Process
  2. Redefining Palliative Surgery: The Congenital Cardiac Surgery Experience
  3. Surgeons and Industry Support- How to Find the Balance?
  4. Transcatheter aortic valve implementation should be controlled and monitored by the medical profession

Works by Dr. Douglas Brown

  1. Pharmaceutical sales representatives and the patient-physician relationship
  2. Ethical issues arising from the performance of pelvic examinations by medical students on anesthetized patients
  3. Regarding zygotes as persons: implications for public policy
  4. Dispositions toward euthanasia among Dutch physicians: an interpretation. American College of Surgeons Web Portal (2008)
  5. Commercial pressures and professional ethics: troubling revisions to the recent ACOG practice bulletins on surgery for pelvic organ prolapse
  6. The perils of commercially-driven surgical innovation
  7. Counseling and consenting women with cancer on their oncofertility options: a clinical perspective
  8. Withdrawal of care from a potentially curable patient
  9. Looking beyond the crystal ball: An ethical dilemma in advance directives implementation in multidisciplinary patient care
  10. Ethical challenges of reconsidered informed consent in trauma
  11. Confronting the therapeutic misconception
  12. Ethical considerations in the use of Pernkopf’s Atlas of Anatomy: a surgical case study
  13. Surgical ethics: theory and practice background
  14. Ethics in a time of Coronavirus: recommendations in the COVID-19 pandemic
  15. Ethics of codes and codes of ethics: when is it ethical to provide cardiopulmonary resuscitation during the COVID-19 pandemic?
  16. Oral and maxillofacial surgeons’ assessment of the role of Pernkopf’s anatomy atlas in surgical practice
  17. When doctors disagree: a case-based discussion of proactive ethics
  18. S Ray, D Brown, P Kopar. Goals of care with palliative surgery. In V Lonchyna, P Kelley, and P Angelos (eds.), Difficult Decisions in Surgical Ethics (Switzerland: Springer, 2022), pp. 539-52.