Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm's brother, tapped for White House health care policy advisor spot.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm's brother, tapped for White House health care policy advisor spot.
By Lynn Sweeton February 14, 2009

WASHINGTON--While the Obama White House is searching for a replacement for health czar Tom Daschle, policy work on health care reform--a priority for the administration--Is ongoing with one key advisor especially well connected.

The brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a noted bioethicist, is advising the Obama administration on health care reform.

Dr. Emanuel is the Chair of the Department of Bioethics at The Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health and a breast oncologist.

Dr. Emanuel is a special advisor to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget for health policy. He told me he is "working on (the) health care reform effort." He is "detailed" to the OMB spot and is still officially an employee of the NIH.

Until last August, Dr. Emanuel was commuting between his Chicago home in West Rogers Park and Washington. He moved to Washington last August after his youngest daughter graduated from Northside College Prep at Bryn Mawr and Kedzie.

One of three wildly successful Emanuel brothers (Ari is a Hollywood superagent) Dr. Emanuel also advised the Clinton White House on health care issues. He is a graduate of Amherst College, receiving his masters of science from Oxford University in Biochemistry. His M.D. is from Harvard Medical School. He holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Harvard University. In addition, in 1987-88, he was a fellow in the Program in Ethics and the Professions at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

According to his NIH bio, Dr. Emanuel is "widely published on the ethics of clinical research, advance care directives, end-of-life issues, euthanasia, the ethics of managed care, and the physician-patient relationship, Dr. Emanuel's articles have appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Journal of American Medical Association, and many other medical and ethics journals. His book, The Ends of Human Life, has been widely praised and received the Rosenhaupt Memorial Book Award by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

"Dr. Emanuel served on the ethics section of former President Clinton's Health Task Force, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and the International Advisory Board on Bioethics of the Pan American Health Organization. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, UCLA, and Brin Professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School."