Norman Fost, MD, MPH
Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics and Bioethics|Professor Emeritus
University of Wisconsin
Biography
Dr. Norman Fost is a graduate of Princeton (AB 1960), Yale (MD 1964) and Harvard (MPH 1973). He completed residency training in pediatrics and 2 years as Chief Resident at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and was a fellow in the Harvard Program in Law, Medicine and Ethics 1972-73. Since 1973 he has been at the University of Wisconsin where he is Professor of Pediatrics, Director of the Program in Medical Ethics, Vice Chair of the Department of Medical History and Bioethics, head of the Child Protection Team and works as a general pediatrician. He is Chairman of the Hospital Ethics Committee, and was Chair of the Health Sciences IRB for 31 years.
He was Director of the Pediatric Residency Training Program for 21 years and Vice Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics from 1985-1995. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Princeton University (1994-1998) and in 1996-97 was the DeCamp Visiting Professor of Bioethics at Princeton. He served on the Ethics Working Group of President Clinton’s Health Care Task Force and in 2003 he received the William G. Bartholome Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics for Excellence in Ethics. In 2007 he was the first recipient of the Patricia Price Browne Award in Bioethics from the Oklahoma University Medical School. In 2011 he was inducted into the Johns Hopkins University Society of Scholars.
Dr Fost has extensive experience in ethical and regulatory issues in human subjects research. He was Chair of the University of Wisconsin Health Sciences Human Subjects Committee for 31 years. He was a co-investigator on one of the largest and most complex randomized clinical trials ever conducted – the Wisconsin Study of Newborn Screening and Early Treatment for Cystic Fibrosis. He has published numerous articles on ethical and regulatory issues in human subjects research. In 2004 he was awarded the Nellie Westermann Prize for Research Ethics and twice was runner-up. In 2006 he received a lifetime achievement award, created by the US DHHS Office of Human Research Protection, for excellence in human research protection. He has twice taught the course on Ethical and Regulatory Issues in Human Subjects Research at the FDA Staff College, and for twelve years has taught a similar course at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions as part of their Graduate Program in Clinical Trials. He has been a consultant to the US Food and Drug Administration on a variety of ethical and regulatory issues and played a key role in the 1996 revisions on waiver of consent in emergency research. He presently serves on the FDA’s Pediatric Advisory Committee and is a member and past-Chair of the FDA Pediatric Ethics Subcommittee.