Dr. Hurlbut is a physician and consulting professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University Medical Center, Stanford, California. After receiving his undergraduate and medical training at Stanford, he completed postdoctoral studies in theology and medical ethics.
His primary areas of interest involve the ethical issues associated with advancing biomedical technology, the biological basis of moral awareness, and studies in the integration of theology and philosophy of biology. He was instrumental in establishing the first course in biomedical ethics at Stanford Medical.
Dr. Hurlbut is the author of numerous publications on science and ethics including the co-edited volume Altruism and Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue (2002), and “Science, Religion and the Human Spirit” in the Oxford Handbook of Science and Religion. He has organized and co-chaired two multi-year interdisciplinary faculty projects at Stanford University, “Becoming Human: The Evolutionary Origins of Spiritual, Religious and Moral Awareness,” and “Brain Mind and Emergence.”
Dr. Hurlbut has testified to the National Academy of Sciences Embryonic Stem Cell Research Guidelines Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. He has made presentations to UNESCO, the Pan American Health Organization, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and at major medical centers and universities worldwide. He has worked with NASA on projects in astrobiology and has been a member of the Chemical and Biological Warfare working group at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.
From 2002 to 2009, he served on the President’s Council on Bioethics. He is the author of Altered Nuclear Transfer, a proposed solution to the moral controversy over embryonic stem cell research, which was funded by the NIH in January 2010.