"Procreative Ethics in an Era of Catastrophe"

Travis N. Rieder, PhD
Associate Research Professor
Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics Deering Hall

Travis N. Rieder, PhD, is associate research professor at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, where he directs the Master of Bioethics degree program. He also has secondary appointments in the Departments of Philosophy and Health Policy & Management. The majority of his scholarship, speaking, and writing for the public falls into one of two research programs. The first involves the ethical and policy issues raised by pain, pain medicine, drugs, addiction, and North America’s drug overdose crisis. On this subject, he has published in the bioethics, medical, and public health literature, as well as for the popular press, including a TED Talk and his first book, In Pain (HarperCollins). The second research program involves the overarching theme of “catastrophe.” In particular, Travis is concerned with how to engage in ethical reasoning about our own, individual lives in a time dominated by massive, structural threats that are too big and too complex for any one of us to meaningfully address on our own. This has led to publications on climate change, pandemics, food ethics, and overpopulation—and is the subject of his second book, Catastrophe Ethics (Dutton, March 2024).