As aN ASSOCIATE RESEARCH PROFESSOR in the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University, I write and teach on a variety of topics in bioethics.

Explore selected publications below.


Peer-reviewed Articles

1.     Travis N. Rieder and Chelsea Modlin. 2024. “How Should We Think About Clinicians' Antibiotic Stewardship Duties?” AMA Journal of Ethics 26(6): E479-485.

2.     Brian Hutler, Travis N. Rieder, Debra J.H. Mathews, David A. Handelman, Ariel M. Greenberg. 2024. “Designing Robots that Do No Harm: Understanding the Challenges of Ethics For Robots.” AI and Ethics, 4:463-471.

3.     Travis N. Rieder. 2023. “Contributory Reasons for and against Procreation: Reply to Grille.” Environmental Ethics 45(3): 287-293.

4.     Travis N. Rieder. 2023.The Future of Health Care Must Be Harm Reductionist—To Bring It About, We Need Moral Philosophy.” St. Louis U. J. Health L. & Pol'y, 16(2).

5.     Travis N. Rieder. 2023. “Green Prescribing is Good, but that Doesn’t Generate Patient Duties.” Journal of Medical Ethics 49: 104-105.

6.     Travis N. Rieder, Lauren Arora Hutchinson, & Jeffrey P. Kahn. 2022. “A Call for Bioethics Communication.” Perspectives in Biology & Medicine 65(4): 629-636.

7.     Daniel Mason-D’Croz, Anne Barnhill, Justin Bernstein, Jessica Bogard, Gabriel Dennis, Peter Dixon, Jessica Fanzo, Mario Herero, Rebecca McLaren, Jeda Palmer, Travis Rieder, Maureen Rimmer, Ruth Faden. 2022. “Assessing ethical implications of the adoption of alternative plant-based beef substitutes in the United States: A general equilibrium modelling study.” Lancet Planetary Health, 6: e658-669.

8.     Travis N. Rieder, Vivian Altiery de Jesus, & Divya Manoharan. 2022. “Ethics in Pain Medicine: A Roadmap.” Forthcoming in The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Bioethics, Eds. Ezio Di Nucci, Ji-Young Lee, Isaac Wagner (Rowman & Littlefield).

9.     Anne Barnhill, Justin Bernstein, Ruth Faden, Rebecca Mclaren, Travis N. Rieder, Jess Fanzo. 2022. “Moral Reasons for Individuals in High-income Countries to Limit Beef Consumption.” Online first in Food Ethics 7(11).

10.  Nabina Liebow and Travis N. Rieder (co-first author). 2022. “On White Individuals’ Responsibility for Promoting Racial Justice.” Bioethics, 36: 274-282.

11.  Travis N. Rieder. 2021. “Ending the War on Drugs Requires Decriminalization. Does it also Require Legalization?” American Journal of Bioethics, 21(4): 38-41.

12.  Travis N. Rieder & Justin Bernstein. 2020. “The Case for ‘Contributory Ethics’: Or How to Think about Individual Ethics in a Time of Global Problems.” Ethics, Policy and the Environment, 23(3): 299-319.

13.  Casey Jo Humbyrd, Alexandra M. Dunham, Amy L. Xu, Travis N. Rieder. 2020. “Restarting Orthopaedic Care in a Pandemic: Ethical Framework and Case Examples.” Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, ePub ahead of print.

14.  L. McLean House II, Kayla N. Tabari, Travis N. Rieder, & Zachary L. McCormick. 2020. “Pain in the Pandemic: Ethical Approaches during COVID-19.” Pain Medicine, ePub ahead of print.

15.  Travis N. Rieder. 2020. “America’s Opioid Crisis is a Bioethics Crisis.” Hastings Center Report 50(4): 24-32.

16.  Travis N. Rieder. 2020. “Is Non-Consensual Tapering of High-Dose Opioid Therapy Justified?” AMA Journal of Ethics, 22(8): E651-657.

17.  Cheryl C. MacPherson, Elise Smith, Travis N. Rieder. 2020. “Does Health Promotion Harm the Environment?” The New Bioethics: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body, ePub ahead of print.

18.  Travis N. Rieder. 2020. “The Perilous Blessing of Opioids.” Missouri Medicine 117(3): 202-203. Adapted from an essay first published in The Wall Street Journal.

19.  Alexandra M. Dunham, Travis N. Rieder, & Casey Jo Humbyrd. 2020. “A Bioethical Perspective for Navigating Moral Dilemmas Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, EPub ahead of print.

20.  Travis N. Rieder, Brian Hutler, Debra JH Mathews. 2020. “Rethinking the Ethics of Robots and Artificial Intelligence: Pragmatic First Steps Toward an Ethics for Semi-Autonomous Agents.” AJOB Neuroscience, 11(2): 120-127.

21.  Travis N. Rieder. 2019. “Worry and Hope in the Making of New People.” Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring.: Staging Life and Death (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press).

22.  Travis N. Rieder. 2019. “The Painful Truth about Pain.” Nature, 573: S16.

23.  Travis N. Rieder. 2019. “Opioids and Ethics: Is Opioid-Free the Only Responsible Arthroplasty?” HSS Journal: The Musculoskeletal Journal of Hospital for Special Surgery, 15(1): 12-16.

24.  Seth Waldman, Charles N. Cornell, Louis A. Shapiro, Todd J. Albert, William Schairer, E. Carlos Rodriguez-Merchan, Ellen M. Soffin, Christopher Lee Wu, Mark Barnes, Alex Rich, Jonathan Avery, Travis N. Rieder. 2019. “CONSENSUS STATEMENT: Toward Opioid-Free Arthroplasty: A Leadership Forum.” HSS Journal: The Musculoskeletal Journal of Hospital for Special Surgery, 15(1): 4-7.

25.  Travis N. Rieder. 2018. “There’s Never Just One Side to the Story: Why America Must Stop Swinging the Opioid Pendulum.” Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, 8(3): 225-232.

26.  Casey Jo Humbyrd & Travis N. Rieder. 2018. “Ethics and Limb Salvage: Presenting Amputation as a Treatment Option in Lower Extremity Trauma.” Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, 100(19): e128(1-4).

27.  Travis N. Rieder. 2018. “Pain Medicine during an Opioid Epidemic Needs More Transparency, Not Less.” American Journal of Bioethics: Neuroscience, 90(3): 183-185.

28.  Adams, S., C. Blanco, H. Chaudhry, H. Chen, R. Chou, M. Christopher, P. Harris, S. Levin, S. Mackey, E. McCance-Katz, P. Moore, J. Rathmell, Travis N. Rieder, B. Twillman. 2017. “First, Do No Harm: Marshaling Clinician Leadership to Counter the Opioid Epidemic.” Special Publication from the National Academy of Medicine, Washington, D.C. https://nam.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/First-Do-No-Harm-Marshaling-Clinician-Leadership-to-Counter-the-Opioid-Epidemic.pdf.

29.  Jake Earl, Colin Hickey, Travis N. Rieder. 2017. “Fertility, Immigration, and the Fight against Climate Change.” Bioethics, 31: 582-589.

30.  Travis N. Rieder. 2017. “Saving or Creating?  Which Are We Doing When We Resuscitate Extremely Preterm Infants?” American Journal of Bioethics, 17(8): 4-12.

31.  Marcus Hedahl, Travis N. Rieder. 2017. “Don’t Feed the Trolls: Bold Climate Action in an Age of Trump and Denialism.” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Special Issue: Trump and the 2016 Election. Online at: https://kiej.georgetown.edu/dont-feed-trolls-bold-climate-action-new-golden-age-denialism/.

32.  Travis N. Rieder. 2017. “In Opioid Withdrawal, with No Help in Sight.” Health Affairs 36, no. 1: 182-185.

- Anthologized in Narrative Matters by Johns Hopkins Press, 2020.

33.  Colin Hickey, Travis N. Rieder, Jake Earl. 2016. “Population Engineering and the Fight against Climate Change.” Social Theory and Practice. 42(4): 845-870.

34.  Travis N. Rieder. 2016. “Why I’m Still a Proportionalist.” Philosophical Studies. 173 (1): 251-270.

35.  Travis N. Rieder. 2015. “How to Solve Prichard’s Dilemma: A Complex Contractualist Account of Moral Motivation.” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy.  Vol. 9, No. 1.

36.  Travis N. Rieder. 2015. “Procreation, Adoption and the Contours of Obligation.” Journal of Applied Philosophy. 32 (3):293-30.


Other Essays and Articles

1.     Travis N. Rieder. 2020. “Editor’s Note.” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal. 30 (2): vii-x.

2.     Travis N. Rieder. 2020. “Editor’s Note.” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal. 30 (1): vii-x.

3.     Justin Bernstein, Brian Hutler, Travis N. Rieder, & Anne Barnhill. 2020. “Grappling with the Ethics of Social Distancing: A Framework for Evaluating Social Distancing Policies and Reopening Plans.” Working paper published directly on the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics Blog. https://bioethics.jhu.edu/research-and-outreach/projects/grappling-with-the-ethics-of-social-distancing/.

4.     Travis N. Rieder. 2016. “Sarah Conly’s One Child: Do We Have a Right to More?” in Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal.

5.     Travis N. Rieder. 2016. “Philosopher’s Corner: Reasons and the Messiness of Morality,” in the Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter (UMD School of Law), Spring.

6.     Marcus Hedahl, Travis N. Rieder. 2014. “Accountability,” SAGE Encyclopedia of Criminal Justice Ethics.

7.     Travis N. Rieder. 2014. “T.M. Scanlon’s Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning and Blame (Harvard: University Press, 2008),” in Journal of Moral Philosophy 7(4): pp. 529-533.

8.     Travis N. Rieder. 2010. “The Literal Making of a Superhero,” in ed. Mark D. White’s Iron Man and Philosophy (Blackwell).

9.     Travis N. Rieder. 2008. “Nanotechnology & Society: Current and Emerging Ethical Issues, eds. Fritz Alhoff and Patrick Lin (Springer: 2008),” in Nanoethics: Ethics for Technologies that Converge at the Nanoscale 2(3): pp. 329-331.

10.  Travis N. Rieder. 2008. “Ethical Theory for Engineers: Avoiding Caricature and Informing Intuitions,” American Society for Engineering Education (Conference Proceedings).

11.  Travis N. Rieder. 2006. “Romanticism,” in Martin Cohen (ed) Essentials of Philosophy and Ethics (London: Hodder Education).