Alena M. Buyx

Alena Buyx is Professor of Ethics in Medicine and Health Technologies and Director of the Institute for History and Ethics of Medicine at Technical University Munich, Germany. She has been a member of the German Ethics Council since 2016 and currently leads its Working Group on Human Germline Editing. Previously, she held appointments at the University of Kiel, University of Münster, Harvard University, and University College London, and she was Assistant Director of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, London.

Alena Buyx is a medical doctor with postgraduate degrees in philosophy and sociology. Her research spans the whole field of biomedical ethics, with a particular focus on ethics of medical innovation and health technologies, research ethics, questions of solidarity and justice in contexts such as public health and health care provision, and novel participatory approaches in biomedicine and beyond. Her work is published in high-ranking journals, such as Science, BMJ, GiM or Bioethics.

She is keen on pursuing an interdisciplinary, embedded-ethics approach and collaborates regularly with clinical colleagues as well as with public health professionals, political and social scientists, philosophers, lawyers or health economists. In addition to research and teaching, Professor Buyx is active in the political and regulatory aspects of biomedical ethics, sitting on a number of high-level national and international ethics bodies concerned with policy development and implementation, and consulting for various international research consortia and policy initiatives. She is committed to communicating with the public and lectures widely; she regularly appears on TV and in various other media. 

Declaration of interests

As a member of the German Ethics Council, Professor Buyx has given evidence and advised on this subject matter. She currently leads the Council’s Working Group on Human Germline Editing.