A philosopher by training, bioethicist by profession, and communicator by passion, Travis Rieder writes and speaks on a variety of ethical and policy issues raised by both prescription and illicit opioid use.

Both in his doctoral training at Georgetown University, and as faculty at Johns Hopkins University’s Berman Institute of Bioethics, Rieder has published widely on a variety of topics in philosophy and ethics. His interest in opioids came about suddenly, after a very intimate run-in with the American healthcare system left him with a profound dependence on oxycodone. In the wake of that experience, Rieder became driven to discover why medicine is so bad at dealing with prescription opioids, and how that problem is related to the broader drug overdose epidemic.

His first article on the topic, in the journal Health Affairs, was one of the most-read essays in 2017 and was excerpted by the Washington Post. Since then, Rieder has written and spoken extensively on the topic for both scholarly and general audiences. The culmination of his first three years of research on the topic is his book, In Pain: A Bioethicist’s Personal Struggle with Opioids.

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