About the Author

Steven Miles, MD is Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis and is on the faculty of the University’s Center for Bioethics.

He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics and teaches and practices at the University of Minnesota.

He has served as President of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities and received its Distinguished Service Award. His other awards include the National Council of Teachers of English’ George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language and membership in the National Honor Society for Public Affairs and Administration.

He has published three books and more than twenty chapters and 120 peer-reviewed articles on medical ethics, human rights, tropical medicine, end of life care and geriatric health care. His latest book, Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror, Random House, 2006 examines military medicine in the war on terror prisons. The Hippocratic Oath and the Ethics of Medicine, Oxford University Press, reviews the meaning of the Hippocratic Oath as illuminated by the medical texts of its time.

He has taught in many countries and has served as medical director for the American Refugee Committee for twenty-five years which has included service as chief medical officer for 45,000 refugees on the Thai Cambodian border and projects in Sudan, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Indonesia and the Thai-Burmese border.

His work has changed end of life care, nursing home care, and medical care in prisons and refugee camps.