The International Association of Catholic Bioethics (IACB) is a community of scholars, clinicians, and ethicists. Our mission is to collaborate to promote ethics that is informed by sound research and practice in health care and Christian philosophical, theological and spiritual foundations to serve the common good.
Our work: The main work of the IACB is to organize a biennial international colloquium and promote collaborations among associates in service, research, and education in bioethics. We discuss and develop positions on emerging and controversial questions in bioethics. We focus especially on questions at the interface of clinical and public health care ethics, and on questions that concern the health and well-being of persons on the periphery of society.
Our history: The IACB originated from a colloquium organized in 2004 by the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute in Toronto, Canada, and attended by representatives of bioethics centres around the world. These bioethicists expressed a desire to form a community informed and inspired by the Catholic tradition that would foster regular discussions regarding bioethics. The IACB was established in 2005 with initial funding from the Order of Malta, a Catholic organization that offers health care and humanitarian aid in over 120 countries. In 2016, the IACB was incorporated in Canada. In 2023, the IACB formed a partnership with the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University, Washington DC, and in 2024, was incorporated in the United States.
Governance: The IACB is governed by an international Board. The current President of the IACB is Dr. Bernadette Tobin of the Australian Catholic University, Sydney, Australia. The Chair of the Academic Committee is Dr. William Sullivan who holds the Joseph P. Kennedy Sr Chair in Bioethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University.
Email: colloquium@iacb.ca