Pain Neuroethics and Bioethics

Dr Daniel Z Buchman is a Bioethicist at the University Health Network in Toronto, Canada, where he focusses his practice on clinical, organizational, and research ethics. He is a Clinician Investigator in the Krembil Brain Institute, a member of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, the University of Toronto Centre for the Study of Pain, and an Assistant Professor with the Division of Clinical Public Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. He received his PhD at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and was based out of the Neuroethics Canada research group (formerly the National Core for Neuroethics).

Dr Buchman’s research is focused on the ethical dimensions of mental illness, substance use, and chronic pain. His additional research interests include organ donation and transplantation and empirical approaches in bioethics. He is a sought-after speaker on a wide-range of ethical issues in healthcare, and he has delivered conference papers nationally and internationally. Dr Buchman’s research draws upon an interdisciplinary methodological toolkit including conceptual bioethics, theory-driven qualitative interviews, focus groups, surveys, and knowledge syntheses.

Dr. Karen D. Davis is a Professor in the Department of Surgery and the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto, and Head of the Division of Brain, Imaging and Behaviour – Systems Neuroscience at the Krembil Brain Institute; University Health Network. She obtained her PhD in Physiology from the University of Toronto and did a post-doctoral fellowship at John Hopkins University. Dr. Davis is founding member of the University of Toronto Centre for the Study of Pain and currently sits on its Executive Committee.

Dr. Davis’s early work involved single cell electrophysiology, with discoveries of brain neurons that encode vascular headaches, “silent” nociceptors capable of chemical and injury-induced sensitization, and human cortical neurons encoding pain and attention. Over the last 30 years, Dr. Davis has pioneered electrophysiological and brain imaging approaches to investigate mechanisms underlying acute and chronic pain and pain-attention interactions. More recently, she has focused on outcomes of traumatic injuries, plasticity associated with treatment and recovery, and individual factors that contribute to disease vulnerability, recovery, and treatment outcomes. Dr. Davis has given over 175 invited lectures and her work has culminated in 200+ papers and book chapters, with over 16,000 citations and an H-index of 66. She also created a TED-Ed video “How does your brain respond to pain?” viewed over 1.6 million times.

Dr. Davis has been a Councillor of the International Association for the Study of Pain, is active in neuroethics, research ethics, created a graduate student oath (published in Science), and chaired the IASP presidential task force on the use brain imaging to diagnosis pain, with recommendations published in Nature Reviews Neurology. Dr. Davis has served on the CIHR Advisory Board for the Institute of Neuroscience, Mental Health and Addiction, and has been section editor for the international journal Pain and PainReports. She was a Mayday Pain and Society Fellow and currently sits on their advisory board. Dr. Davis has been inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and has received research and mentorship awards. She is currently President-Elect of the Canadian Pain Society and will serve as its president from 2020-22.