Medical association honours Sr. Nuala Kenny

By 
  • August 25, 2009
Sr. Nuala Kenny, who has spent most of her life facing down what she calls the “de-moralization of modern medicine” in the context of advancing technology and commercialization, will receive the Canadian Medical Association ’s Dr. William Marsden Award for leadership in medical ethics.

Kenny is a pediatrician, a former professor of medicine and ethics at the University of Toronto, Queen’s University and Dalhousie University , and a one-time deputy minister of health of Nova Scotia. She founded Dalhousie’s department of bioethics and served on the ethics committees of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada , the Canadian Pediatric Society, the National Council for Bioethics in Human Research , the National Science Advisory Board and the National Forum on Health. She has been president of both the Canadian Pediatric Society and the Canadian Bioethics Society. She is an officer of the Order of Canada , was a founding member of the Governing Council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research , one of the founders of the Governing Council of the Health Council of Canada and one of the founders of Canadian Doctors for Medicare .

In 1962, as a young woman, Kenny left her home in New York to join the Sisters of Charity of Halifax .

Since retiring from Dalhousie in Halifax earlier this year, Kenny has continued her writing career with more than 100 publications to her name and as a health policy advisor to the Catholic Health Association of Canada responding to the euthanasia challenge.

The CMA’s ethics award is named after the doctor who drafted the CMA’s original Code of Ethics in 1868. The award was to be presented to Kenny Aug. 19.

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