M argaret Somerville holds professorships in both the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University, Montreal. She is Samuel Gale Professor of Law (the first woman in Canada to hold a named Chair in Law) and the Founding Director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law. She plays an active role in the world-wide development of applied ethics, in particular, the study of the wider ethical and legal aspects of medicine and science. Professor Somerville has a background in both science and law. She graduated, with distinction, in Pharmacy from the University of Adelaide (1963); in Law, with First Class Honours and the University Medal, from the University of Sydney (1973); and was awarded a Doctorate in Civil Law by McGill University (1978). She has received honorary doctorates in Law from the University of Windsor, Ontario (1992); Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia (1993); St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia (1996); the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario (2004); and an honorary doctorate in science from Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario (2006). She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1991. She is the recipient of many honours and awards, including the Distinguished Service Award of the American Society of Law and Medicine (1985); the Pax Orbis ex Jure Gold Medal of the World Jurist Association for support and dedication to the cause of world peace through law (1985); the Order of Australia (1989) in recognition of her international contribution to law and bioethics; the Arthur Kroeger College Award for Ethics (2002); and, was chosen by an international jury as the first recipient of the UNESCO Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science (2003).
Professor Somerville has an extensive national and international publishing and speaking record. She has wide experience in communicating with large audiences, especially through television and radio, on topics that raise complex legal and ethical problems for society and is frequently involved in such work in Canada and abroad. She is deeply committed to the public’s right to be involved in the decision making shaping our society. To this end, she authored The Ethical Canary: Science, Society and the Human Spirit and Death Talk: the Case against Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide. She has edited Do We Care? Renewing Canada's Commitment to Health, Proceedings of the first Directions for Canadian Health Care conference; and co-edited Transdisciplinarity: reCreating Integrated Knowledge. Most recently she delivered the 2006 CBC Massey Lectures, The Ethical Imagination: Journeys of the Human Spirit, published as a book by House of Anansi Press.
Professor Somerville is a consultant on a broad range of topics to governments and non-governmental bodies, including the Global Programme on AIDS of the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, and law reform commissions in Canada and Australia. She has been a keynote speaker at UNESCO conferences in Paris, Barcelona and Tehran and is currently Vice President of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO’s Sectoral Commission on Natural and Social Sciences. In 2005, she undertook a lecture tour of Iranian universities and was a chairperson at the World Jurist Congress in China. She was the founding Chairperson of the National Research Council of Canada Ethics Committee and has served on many clinical and research ethics committees, and many editorial boards, advisory boards and boards of directors, including the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, WADA (World Anti-Doping Authority) ethics committee, NWMO (Nuclear Waste Management Organization) ethics committee, and the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics. She is a director of the Beaverbrook (Canadian) Foundation and the Molinari Foundation.
Her work has included research, speaking engagements and consultation on issues related to euthanasia; pain relief; genetics; reproductive technologies; biotechnology; ecosystem health; aging populations; mental health and mental disability; human rights in health care, including in a global context; the pharmaceutical industry; public health; health care systems; medical malpractice; human medical research; animal research; AIDS; abortion; the allocation of medical resources; and the role that scientific and medical research and technology play in formation of societal values and the societal paradigm.
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