Maartje Schermer, MD, PhD, (1969) holds the Civis Mundi chair in Philosophy of Medicine at the department of Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine at the ErasmusMC University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The focus of her current research is in neuro ethics, enhancement, the ethics of emerging medical technologies, and philosophy of medicine.
She trained as a Medical Doctor at the University of Amsterdam, where she also studied philosophy (MA). She got her PhD in at the same University in 2001 with the thesis <em>“The different faces of autonomy – patient autonomy in ethical theory and hospital practice</em>” (published with Kluwer Publishers, 2002). <br />
After her PhD dr Schermer obtained a number of grants to work as a postdoc researcher at the Universities of Amsterdam and at Wageningen University and Research Center. Projects included research on defining and shaping ‘the good life’ for demented nursing home patients, and developing a pragmatist ethics for our technological culture. Around the same time she worked part-time as a policy advisor on medial-ethical issues for the Dutch Council for Public Health and Healthcare. Her interest in neuroethics first emerged when she was a member of a committee of the Dutch Health Council that drafted a report on the implications of new and emerging possibilities for influencing the brain, in 2002.<br />
In 2003 she joined the department of Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine at ErasmusMC, were she subsequently worked as an assistant, associate and full professor. She obtained grants for a large number of research projects. From 2005-2008 she was project leader of ‘Botox for the brain’, a multi-disciplinary project on the ethics of psychopharmaceutical enhancement. This project yielded a series of publications that have contributed significantly to emerging debate on cognitive enhancement . She also did some work on telecare and telemedicine, and their implications for self-management. Between 2008-2012 she supervised projects on the ethics of whish fulfilling medicine, on DTC genomic testing for multifactiorial diseases , and the ethics and philosophy of anti-aging medicine. The shifting boundaries of medicine, both as a field of knowledge and as a social practice are at stake in some way or other in all of these projects.
Currently dr Schermer supervises ‘Our brain as capital’, a project in cooperation with the Bioethics Institute of Ghent University, on the ethical desirability of moral bioenhancement, and ‘the Reassurance industry’, a project on the ethics of health checks and prevention culture. Other current research interests include the ethical and philosophical issues arising from new and emerging technologies aimed at modulating the brain (such as DBS, TMS or tDCS), as well as telecare devices and health& lifestyle apps, especially their implications for autonomy and personal identity.
Besides doing research, supervising PhD students and performing several management tasks, she is also strongly involved in developing and teaching the ethics and philosophy curriculum for medical students at ErasmusMC. She served for more than 10 years as a member of an IRB, and was an editor of two Dutch journals for applied philosophy.<br />
She is currently vice-chair of the standing committee on Ethics and law of the Health Council of the Netherlands, chair of the Dutch Society for Philosophy and Medicine, and member of the Medical Ethics Committee of ErasmusMC.
