Ronald Bayer, PhD

Professor Emeritus of Sociomedical Sciences, Special Lecturer in Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University

Dr. Bayer's research has examined ethical and policy issues in public health, with a special focus on AIDS, tuberculosis, illicit drugs, and tobacco. His broader goal is to develop an ethics of public health. He is the Co-Director of the Center for the History & Ethics of Public Health. He has also taken a leadership role in the HIV Center's work on ethics since the Center's beginnings and is now Co-Director of the Ethics, Policy, and Human Rights Core. Prior to coming to Columbia, he was at the Hastings Center, a research institute devoted to the study of ethical issues in medicine and the life science. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences. His published work includes articles in the leading journals in public health and medicine as well as a number of books including AIDS Doctors: Voices from the Epidemic (2000, written with Gerald Oppenheimer) and Mortal Secrets: Truth and Lies in the Age of AIDS (2003, written with Robert Klitzman).

Education

  • Ph.D., University of Chicago

Publications

  • Searching Eyes: Privacy, the State, and Disease Surveillance in America (University of California Press, 2007), co-authored with Amy L. Fairchild and James Colgrove
  • Shattered Dreams?: An Oral History of the South African AIDS Epidemic (Oxford University Press, 2007), co-authored with Gerald M. Oppenheimer
  • "Public Health Policy and the AIDS Epidemic: An End to HIV Exceptionalism," (The New England Journal of Medicine, 1991)
  • Private Acts, Social Consequences: AIDS and the Politics of Public Health (Free Press, 1989)

Programs