Raymond G. De Vries, PhD

Amy Lynn:  [email protected]

Raymond De Vries, PhD is a professor in the University of Michigan’s Department of Learning Health Sciences and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, as well as co-director of the Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine at U of M. Dr. De Vries is also a visiting professor at the CAPHRI School for Public Health and Primary Care, University of Maastricht, the Netherlands. He is particularly interested in the regulation of science and the production of scientific knowledge; clinical trials of genetic therapies; the export of western moral traditions to non-western societies; and the social, ethical, and policy issues associated with the medicalization of pregnancy and birth. Dr. De Vries published A Pleasing Birth: Midwifery and Maternity Care in the Netherlands (Temple University Press, 2005) and is co-editor of The View from Here: Bioethics and the Social Sciences (Blackwell, 2007) and Bioethics in the Field, a special issue of Social Science in Medicine (2013).

Raymond De Vries teaches LHS 671: Ethics and Policy Issues for Learning Health Systems. 

Research and scholarly interests: research ethics, methods of qualitative and quantitative research, comparative study of health care systems, uses of conscience by health care providers, therapeutic misconception, the ethics of biobanking, the social organization of personalized medicine  

Subject-matter expertise: ethics, methods of research, social organization of maternity care, research integrity, research misconduct

Other professional highlights:

• Professor at the medical school and department of sociology at the University of Michigan, Academie Verloskunde Maastricht / Zuyd University, and at the School for Public Health and Primary Care (CAPHRI) of Maastricht University
• Widely known for his analyses of the organizational and cultural influences on obstetrics and midwifery, demonstrating how medical practice is significantly shaped by non-clinical factors
• Author of A Pleasing Birth: Midwifery and Maternity Care in the Netherlands (Temple University Press, 2005)
• Lead editor of The View from Here: Bioethics and the Social Sciences (Blackwell, 2007)
• Co-editor of a special issue of Social Science and Medicine (2013) that focuses on “bioethics in the field’
• Co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Clinical Ethics (2013) on the ethics of choice of birthplace
• Co-editor of a handbook on the use of qualitative methods in health research (Qualitative Methods in Health Research, Sage, 2010)
• Director of a team of international scholars focused on comparative study of maternity care systems, a collaboration that has resulted in one edited collection, Birth by Design (Routledge, 2001) and several peer-reviewed publications
• Invited lecturer on the sociology of maternity care and on the sociology of bioethics in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Japan, and Africa
• Co-developer of the Path of Excellence in Medical Ethics for the University of Michigan Medical School
• Featured in video: How Trust Shapes the Medical Field: A Sociologist's Perspective (2017)
• Featured in video: The Rise of Bioethics in Response to Medical Distrust: Key Findings (2017)

Selected publications:

• R. De Vries, A. Stanczyk, I. F. Wall, R. Uhlmann, MS; L.J. Damschroder, S. Y. Kim, “Assessing the quality of democratic deliberation: A case study of public deliberation on the ethics of surrogate consent for research.” Social Science and Medicine, 70, 2010: 1896-1903. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.02.031
• R. De Vries and Trudo Lemmens. “The subjectivity of objective evidence: The social and cultural shaping of medical evidence.” Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 62, No. 11, 2006: 2694-2706.
• R. De Vries. ”How can we help? From ‘sociology in’ bioethics to ‘sociology of’ bioethics.” Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, Vol. 32, No. 2, 2004: 279-292.
• B. C. Martinson, M. S. Anderson and R. De Vries. “Scientists behaving badly.” Nature, Vol. 435, 9 June 2005: 737-738.
• Lin, KY, Anspach, RR, Crawford, B, Parnami, S, Fuhrel-Forbis, A, De Vries, RG. What must I do to succeed?: Narratives from the US premedical experience. Social Science and Medicine, 2014, 119: 98-105.
• Bogdan-Lovis E. and De Vries RG, Ethics and the Architecture of Choice for Home and Hospital Birth. Journal of Clinical Ethics, 24(3), 2013: 192-197.