Howard Brody received his MD degree from MSU's College of Human Medicine (1976) and his PhD in philosophy from MSU (1977). After completing his residency in family practice at the University of Virginia Medical Center, he returned to MSU where he taught in the Departments of Family Practice, Medical Humanities, and Philosophy. In 1985 he began serving as the director of the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences until 2000 when he stepped down and became a fulltime professor in the Department of Family Practice until his retirement from the university. Brody was a prolific writer, authoring such books as Ethical Decisions In Medicine (1976) which explores human experimentation, informed consent, mind control, euthanasia, abortion and other ethical issues; The Healer's Power (1992) which deals with the concept of a physician's power, and how that power can be used and abused; and The Placebo Response: How You Can Release the Body's Inner Pharmacy for Better Health (2000) which explains how this mind-body connection works, and offers practical advice on how people can harness this power. An article Brody co-authored for the New England Journal of Medicine in 1994 ("Regulating Physician-Assisted Death") supported the idea that doctor-assisted suicides should be legal with a strictly regulated policy, each case being thoroughly examined by an independent committee. Under the plan presented by Brody and his fellow authors, any physician who considered assisting a patient's death would be required to consult with other health care professionals who had certified expertise in such areas as pain relief and psychiatry. "It's the guess of the authors ... that under this plan the vast majority of patients requesting assisted death will end up electing to continue living," Brody said. In 1984 Dr. Brody received the Teacher-Scholar Award at MSU for his ability as a superb lecturer and a physician who had bridged the road between science and philosophy. "It is clearly evident that Dr. Brody manifests the ideals of the complete teacher and scholar, the dedicated academician whose endeavors can only be judged as superior." Additional honors he received include the Journal of Family Practice Citation Award (1994), the Annual Award from the Society for Health and Human Values (1995), the College of Human Medicine Distinguished Faculty Award (1996), the MSU Distinguished Faculty Award (1997), the Michigan State Medical Society Presidential Citation Award (1998), and the Excellence Award for Interdisciplinary Scholarship from Phi Kappa Phi at MSU (1999). During the late fall of 1984, Brody went to the UK and Ireland as a visiting professor of the section on General Practice, Royal Society of Medicine. While in this role, he visited the Departments of General Practice at the universities of Manchester, Dublin, and Edinburgh and delivered a lecture on medical ethics before the Royal Society of Medicine. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1996 due in part to a perceived need to have more family physicians and primary care physicians involved in the organization's work. Dr. Brody has served on several boards including as chairman on the Task Force on Humanities in Family Practice Education, Society of Teachers of Family Medicine from 1981-86; president of the Council on Medical Ethics Resource Network of Michigan from 1986-90; President of the Society for Health and Human Values from 1988-89; and as the chair on the Commission on Death and Dying for the State of Michigan from 1993-94.
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