The Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics is pleased to announce a call for submissions for the Annual Henry K. Beecher Prize in Medical Ethics.

A prize of $1,000 will be awarded to an HMS or HSDM student for the best scholarly essay on any topic in ethics and medicine. 

The essays will be judged by a blind panel with expertise in medical ethics.  

The Beecher Prize is established in honor of Henry K. Beecher, MD, the late Henry Isaiah Dorr Professor of Anaesthesia, first professor of anaesthesia at Harvard, and indefatigable clinician, educator, and investigator, including provocative work in the 1950's on the effects of placebos in medicine and research. 

Dr. Beecher helped launch the modern field of medical ethics with his explosive 1966 New England Journal of Medicine article, "Ethics and Clinical Research", which exposed widespread ethical violations in research using human subjects. Many of these studies had been published in leading peer-reviewed medical journals and supported by agencies of the U.S. Government. Dr. Beecher's paper catalyzed major and enduring ethical reforms in human experimentation and patients' rights.

The Beecher Prize continues Dr. Beecher's legacy of critical ethical analysis of contemporary medical issues.

Entries must be submitted by 
Friday, MAY 15, 2020,
All paper should be submitted online to bioethics@hms.harvard.edu

Criteria for judging essays: 

• Clear presentation of the ethical issue and its importance, including its historical and social context;
• Ethical analysis of alternative approaches to the issue;
• Ethical justification of any concluding recommendations;
• Originality of thought; scholarly rigor;
• Clarity of expression and quality of writing.

Students may submit an original piece of writing or work done for a class. Authorship should be the student's alone. Papers should be double-spaced in 11 point font with 1" margins. 10-12 pages suggested, 15 page maximum.