Faculty & Staff
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Leonard M. Fleck, Ph.D. |
Leonard M. Fleck, Ph.D. is currently a Professor of Philosophy and Medical Ethics in the Philosophy Department (College of Arts and Letters) and in The Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences (College of Human Medicine), Michigan State University. He is now in his twentieth year at Michigan State. Prior to that he taught for nine years in the Philosophy Department and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University-South Bend. Prior to that he taught for five years in the Philosophy Department at St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, IN. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from St. Louis University in 1975. His bachelor's degree was from Loyola University (Chicago) in 1966.
Currently, Dr. Fleck's main areas of teaching and research are medical ethics, health care policy, social and political philosophy. He has published over seventy articles, either as book chapters or in various professional journals of philosophy and medical ethics. His major research project at the moment is a book titled Just Caring: The Ethical Challenges of Health Care Rationing and Democratic Deliberation.
He has directed a number of community education projects around topics of justice and health care policy including the statewide health reform project "Just Caring: Conflicting Rights, Uncertain Responsibilities (Citizen Forums for Health Reform)". The focus of that project was on the moral issues raised by managed care and a healthcare system increasingly driven by profits and competition.
Dr. Fleck has also been the director of the community dialogue phase of a three-year NIH Genome project "Genome Technology and Reproduction:Values and Public Policy." Those community dialogues occurred in at least seven major Michigan communities. The most recent dialogues were aimed at the African American and Hispanic communities.
In the mid-1970's Dr. Fleck directed a series of community forums under the title "Humanistic Approaches to Death and Dying" which resulted in the creation of the Hospice of St. Joseph County, a community based hospice program. He served as the second President of the Board from 1980 to 82.
During early 1993 Dr. Fleck served as a member of Working Group #17, "The Ethical Foundations of the New Health Care System" for The White House Task Force on Health Reform. From 1989-90 he served as the staff ethicist for the Governor's Task Force on Access to Health Care (Michigan). He is a past president of The Medical Ethics Resource Network of Michigan [MERN].
In 2003 Dr. Fleck was honored by Michigan State University with a University Distinguished Faculty Award.
