Joseph Fletcher

Joseph Francis Fletcher (April 10, 1905 – October 28, 1991) was an American professor who founded the theory of situational ethics in the 1960s. Fletcher was a pioneer in the field of bioethics, and a leading academic proponent of the potential benefits of abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, eugenics, and cloning. He was ordained as an Episcopal priest, later identifying himself as an atheist. He taught Christian Ethics at Episcopal Divinity School and Harvard Divinity School from 1944 to 1970. He was the first professor of medical ethics at the University of Virginia and co-founded the Program in Biology and Society there. In 1974, the American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto II. Fletcher grew to believe strongly in the right to die with dignity, and he served as president of the Euthanasia Society of America from 1974 to 1976. He was also a member of the American Eugenics Society and the Association for Voluntary Sterilization. Fletcher died on October 28, 1991, at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, from cardiovascular disease. He was 86 years old.