Robert M. Veatch, Ph.D., is Professor of Medical Ethics and the former Director of the Kennedy Institue of Ethics at Georgetown University. He also holds appointments as Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Georgetown Medical Center. He is the Senior Editor of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal and a former member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American Medical Association. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy from Purdue University (1961), a Masters of Science in Pharmacology from the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco (1962), and a Ph.D. concentrating in medical ethics from Harvard University in 1970. He was formerly Director of the Research Group on Death and Dying at the Hastings Center in New York.

He served as an ethics consultant in the preparation of the legal case of Karen Ann Quinlan, the woman whose parents won the right to forego life-support (1975-76) and testified in the case of Baby K, the anencephalic infant whose mother insisted on the right of access to ventilatory support.