Daniel Sokol

Daniel Sokol was born in Puyricard, France, to Ronald P. Sokol,^[1][2] and educated in France until the age of 11.^{[citation needed]} He attended Winchester College before studying Linguistics and French Literature at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.^[3] He received his Bachelor of Arts in 2001 and obtained a Wellcome Trust Award to study a master's degree in Social and Economic History (specialising in the History of Medicine) at Green College, Oxford.^[3] He then studied for a Master's in Medical Ethics at Imperial College London and, under the supervision of Raanan Gillon and Tim Rhodes, completed a PhD in the subject, also funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Following his PhD, he was appointed a lecturer in Ethics at Keele University. In 2008, he moved to St George's, University of London, before qualifying as a barrister at the Inner Temple in 2011.^[3][4]

In 2005, while senior lecturer in Clinical Ethics at Imperial College, London, Sokol co-authored, with Gillian Bergson, a textbook on medical ethics and law for students.^[5] Since 2007, he has written a regular column, as Ethics Man, for the British Medical Journal.^[6][7] In 2012, Sokol published Doing Clinical Ethics, a textbook for clinicians.^[8]

In October 2018 Book Guild Publishing released his book Tough Choices, a text aimed at a general readership.^[9][10][11]

Sokol set up the Centre for Remedial Ethics in November 2019, which provides one-to-one medical ethics courses to clinicians undergoing disciplinary procedures.^[12][13]

Sokol has criticised the decision making practices of university panels, arguing that procedural shortcomings can result in unjust outcomes with serious consequences for students.^[14] In response, he founded Alpha Academic Appeals in late 2012 to provide professional support for students seeking to challenge unfair academic decisions.^[14] This led to King's College London terminating his appointment as an honorary member of the teaching staff in 2014 after he had held the position for less than a year. This was on the basis that Alpha was charging students for services that they could allegedly obtain for free from the students' union, and therefore it would be undesirable for the College to continue its association with him.^[15][16]

Sokol has called for the introduction of professional clinical ethicists in British hospitals, argued that doctors have a strong but not absolute duty of care in times of virulent epidemics, and defended the moral permissibility of clinicians deceiving patients in rare circumstances.^[17][18][19] He highlights the ethical conflict faced by healthcare workers during deadly pandemics, where their duty to care for individuals clashes with their duty to protect their own lives and families.^{[20][21][22][23]}

American professor of infectious diseases, Charles S. Bryan, notes Sokol to have studied and written on medical ethics surrounding Sir William Osler and in his Encyclopaedia of Osler notes that Sokol, writing in the British Medical Journal in 2007, interprets Aequanimitas as an essay that "tackles head-on a timeless question: what makes a good doctor?"^[24] In his article William Osler and the jubjub of ethics; or how to teach medical ethics in the 21st century (2007), Sokol notes that Osler’s view of ethics centred on personal character and virtues, aiming to form good doctors, teachers, and students through strong moral habits rather than by analysing specific moral problems.^[25] He argues that medical ethics education today should follow this example by focusing on real interactions between doctors and patients, supported by ethics discussions on hospital wards, instead of relying mostly on classroom lectures.^[25]

In his personal life, Sokol is a semi-professional magician.^[26][27] He is married to Samantha, a neurosurgeon.^[1]

Sokol has been a visiting scholar in bioethics at Washington Hospital Center, Washington, D.C., and Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, Oregon, and has sat on a number of committees, including those of the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Justice, and the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He has been a senior editor of the Postgraduate Medical Journal.^[28] Since 2020 Sokol has chaired the Metropolitan Police Research Ethics Committee.^[29] From 2023 to 2025, he was president of the Osler Club of London.^[3]

• List of presidents of the Osler Club of London