Chris Hackler, Ph.D.

Chris Hackler joined the faculty of the UAMS College of Medicine in 1982 as the first director of the new Division of Medical Humanities. He came from East Tennessee State University, where he chaired the Department of Philosophy and taught in the Department of Family Practice. After graduating with High Honors from Hendrix College and studying in Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship, he received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina. He has also received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation (Brown University) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (Indiana University). He was Sealy & Smith/NEH Visiting Scholar at the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 2001.

Dr. Hackler was active in the Society for Health and Human Values until it merged in 1998 with two other organizations to form the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH). He was elected Chair of the Association of Faculty in the Medical Humanities in 1991. He served on the governing board of the Society and edited its newsletter Of Value from 1992 to 1998. He received the Society's Distinguished Service Award in 1996.   After the merger, he served as the first editor of ASBH Exchange, a quarterly publication.

Dr. Hackler has lectured at medical schools and college campuses around the country and abroad. From 1996-2008 he was a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow of the Council of Independent Colleges, spending a week each year in residence at participating liberal arts colleges teaching classes in various departments and meeting with faculty and student groups.

Recent publications include an edited book and articles in various medical and legal journals on the topic of advance directives and end-of-life decisions, and a second edited book and set of articles on rationing and health care reform in the context of an aging population. He is currently working on social issues in the use of genetic and reproductive technologies. Of special interest is the possibility of genetically extending the human life span. For an abbreviated list of publications click here