Bettina Schöne-Seifert - Biography#

Bettina Schöne-Seifert studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg, Göttingen, and Vienna, and took the MA-program in Bioethics at Georgetown University/Washington DC. She earned her board certificate and a medical doctorate as well as a philosophical PhD.

She started professional work as a resident in paediatrics at University of Göttingen, and later on served as an associate professor in various philosophy departments (Göttingen, Zürich, Hannover). In 1993/94 she was a fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Berlin. Since 2003, Schöne-Seifert holds the Chair for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Münster.

She has served for about 10 years as a member of the German National Ethics Council and as a fellow of the Max Planck Society. She is a member of the Academy of Sciences & Humanities at Göttingen and the Leopoldina National Academy of Sciences.

She has widely published on various questions in the field of biomedical ethics. Currently she is working on end-of-life issues, reproductive ethics and, more fundamentally, on conceptual questions of patient autonomy and of science-oriented versus alternative medicine and on matters of normative justification in applied ethics.

Bettina Schöne-Seifert is married and has four children.