Dr. Derrick Aarons
Short History
Dr. Aarons has had an outstanding career in Bioethics. He has served as the founding Chairman of the Advisory Panel on Ethics and Medico-Legal Affairs in the Ministry of Health in Jamaica; as a Member of the Medical Council of Jamaica; as Vice-Chairman of the National Bioethics Committee of Jamaica; and as Convenor and founding President of the Bioethics Society of the English-speaking Caribbean (BSEC).
As the inaugural Ethicist for the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), Dr. Aarons wrote several policies for the member states of CARICOM pertaining to research ethics. Prior to that, he wrote the Regional Model Code of Practice regarding HIV & AIDS for Caribbean Medical Practitioners under the auspices of the PANCAP Unit in the CARICOM Secretariat.
In 2014, as the Ethicist at CARPHA, Dr. Aarons personally trained and started the CARPHA Research Ethics Committee/IRB – to serve CARPHA and its 24 member states, and in 2016 – he conceptualized and launched CANREC, the Caribbean Network of Research Ethics Committees/IRBs, which until now continues its invaluable work across the Caribbean.
In developing research ethics capacity across the Caribbean, Dr. Aarons has been tutoring in the Fogarthy-funded Caribbean Research Ethics Education Initiative (CREEi) since its inception in 2015. The programme initially trained eight persons from across the Caribbean each year in the post-graduate Diploma in Research Ethics, and now trains 4 persons from the Caribbean and 12 persons from Central America in the Masters in Bioethics (with specialization in Research Ethics) each year.
Dr. Aarons was a member of the International Advisory Board for Bioethics for the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), and is adjunct Faculty in the Bioethics Department at Clarkson University in the USA, a Consultant for the Center for Global Bioethics at St. George’s University in Grenada, and a member of the Executive Council of RedBioetica UNESCO.
He is a member of the Editorial Board for the Developing World Bioethics Journal, the Scientific Board of Revista RedBioetica UNESCO Journal, the Editorial Board for Revista Bioetica, and has numerous peer-reviewed journal publications in various medical and bioethical subject areas.
In 2018, Dr. Aarons was appointed to serve a 4-year tenure by the Director-General of UNESCO – on the International Bioethics Committee (IBC) of UNESCO, the only advisory body within the United Nations system that debates and forms policies on the ethical issues of advances in the life sciences worldwide. In 2022, he was re-appointed for another 4 years, to serve on the IBC until 2026.
Dr. Aarons also served as the Health Registrar in the Turks and Caicos Islands from 2018 – 2020, and then as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Health Professions Authority in the Turks and Caicos Islands from 2020 to 2022. He is now currently serving as the Ethics Consultant for the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA). In 2021, he was appointed a Commissioner by the Archbishop of Canterbury to represent the Province of the West Indies on the inaugural worldwide Anglican Communion Science Commission (ACSC) for the next ten (10) years, and he is also an Executive Member of the Ethics Committee for the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA).
Dr. Aarons is a medical graduate of the University of the West Indies, a founding member of the Caribbean College of Family Physicians in Jamaica, and has his Masters in Bioethics from the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics, and Law (with clinical ethics training at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, Canada), and his PhD in Experimental Medicine and Bioethics from McGill University in Canada.