Dr. Howard A. Brody’s remarkable career was defined by an extensive commitment to exploring the intersection of medicine, ethics, and humanism. He led the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences at Michigan State University. His tenure at MSU and later at UTMB Galveston was marked by accolades, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.

But Howard was more than an academic—he had the heart of a healer and the mind of a scholar. As a family practice physician, he combined his intellectual rigor with profound compassion for his patients. His research shaped conversations around end-of-life care, the placebo effect, and ethical issues in the pharmaceutical industry.  A devoted fan of Sherlock Holmes, Howard found joy in the mysteries of life and literature alike. His membership in the Baker Street Irregulars was one of his cherished affiliations.

Above all, Howard was dedicated to others. He was singularly devoted to his late wife, Daralyn, whom he lovingly cared for in her final years. His life was rich with travel, family gatherings, and backyard BBQs. He was also a dedicated mentor and professor. His legacy lives on not only through his influential writings and the countless lives he touched along the way— but also through the generations of medical humanists that he inspired.

As graduates of the Institute for the Medical Humanities (IMH), the authors were lucky to have Dr. Brody as a professor, mentor, and member of their committees. Our friendship solidified in 2010 when Dr. Brody volunteered us to be the graduate student members of an IMH research group working to create white papers on the ethical implications of pandemic influenza planning to support the work of the Texas Department of State Health Services. The project was a success. As fortune would have it, that research served us and our institutions well during the difficult decisions engendered by the rise of SARS CoV-2, but our loving friendship has been a most precious gift that he left for us. Howard always appreciated a good story, so we have selected a few short memories to share in tribute. These memories have been shared by Drs. Sheena Eagan, Alina Bennett, Nicole Piemonte, Jiin-Yu Chen, Jason E. Glenn, Krisann Muskievicz–-all former students or colleagues at UTMB.

Sheena Eagan

Dr. Brody was deeply influential in shaping my understanding of professional moral obligations, the realities of academic life, and the value of mentorship. I often reflect on the many conversations we had about the internal morality of medicine. This work and his insights continue to guide my work in military medical ethics and remind me of our first conversations about military medical ethics and the problem of dual-loyalty. When I decided to focus on military medical ethics for my dissertation, I remember having a long conversation with him about it. He was always curious and found my passion for the military medical population intriguing. We had long conversations about the power of rhetoric and the importance of not alienating the audience that one hopes to impact. These conversations helped me develop the tone and voice that I would use in my work, offering critical inquiry and analysis in a way that brought the military in, rather than alienating them. He also had a remarkable ability to blend academic rigor with practical time management, a balance I strive for to this day. Howard joked that he could “write better than anyone who could write faster than him and faster than anyone who could write better,” a line that perfectly captured his wit and remarkable productivity.

Nicole Piemonte

During my first month as a brand-new graduate student at the Institute for the Medical Humanities, I attended my first IMH colloquium, which featured Dr. Brody discussing his newly-published book, The Golden Calf: Economism and American Policy. In the audience was a member of the School of Medicine faculty, whom I can only describe as a (perhaps well-intentioned?) heckler. While Dr. Brody was offering a rather compelling argument that the assumptions guiding contemporary capitalism are not scientific or economic “facts” but are instead informed by 19th-century evangelicalism and ideas about the “Protestant Work Ethic,” this person in the audience was audibly sighing and rolling his eyes. I was dreading the Q&A portion of the talk and feared the worst. Unsurprisingly, the faculty member shot up his hand and furiously described the blasphemy that Howard Brody had committed. I was horrified, and I could not imagine how Dr. Brody was feeling. But that man did not break a sweat! Unphased, Dr. Brody responded calmly, cogently, and earnestly. I was in awe. He was able to address the faculty person’s question and totally de-escalate the tension. I now try to channel Dr. Brody during every Q&A session! 

Jason E. Glenn

I have several cherished memories of Howard Brody. He was committed to the principles of DEI long before they became the nemeses of conservatives. The first thing he did as new director of the Institute for Medical Humanities was to hire two young Black aspiring historians of medicine (myself and Dale Delancey), with freshly minted PhDs, recognizing the lack of racial diversity in the field of bioethics and a failure of the field, at that time, to give serious attention to addressing health inequities. He was also a champion of gender pay equity, as his next three hires were all women, and he made sure that they had equal pay to the men in the department of equivalent rank. He was also a dedicated student advocate and advisor, who did not let the unrelenting demands of his prolific research detract from his duty to train the next generation. I remain most amazed by his breadth of knowledge in the wide and sprawling multidisciplinary field that is the medical humanities. This was perhaps best demonstrated in the interactions Howard had with guest speakers at the IMH during the Q&A sessions.  If you will forgive the HIPPA violation, Howard shared publicly with his co-faculty that he suffered from sleep apnea for a spell. As a consequence, there was a period when, before being treated for the disorder, he fell into a deep sleep around five minutes into any lecture given in our department. Amazingly, Howard could wake up at the end of the talk and ask the most cogent and coherent questions in the room. “Goodness gracious,” I thought, “the man’s a brilliant scholar even in his sleep!”  

Jiin-Yu Chen

Dr. Brody was on my qualifications committee and my dissertation advisor, so we had a lot of meetings. He was kind of gruff (as you all know), but I felt we worked well together. He was always well-prepared for our bi-weekly meetings, giving insightful and helpful thoughts (of course), and only focusing on whatever we were talking about for that meeting (as opposed to meandering into something else or listening with half an ear), which wouldn’t always necessarily be true of a senior faculty member towards a graduate student’s time. He never canceled and he never flaked out. And he was really good at promptly responding to my emails. Occasionally, our meetings ran over, and he got a little twitchy, but he never said anything. But something I took away from him is the importance of rigorous time management and developing that skill (I am still getting there) and that it’s your job to figure out how to carve out the time to accomplish/honor that job/task with whoever you need to work with, no matter how great the power differential. I think of this occasionally when an Important PI won’t respond to my emails (and I’m usually trying to help them figure out some administrative thing). I figure if Dr. Brody can find the time to regularly meet with a graduate student with little to no benefit to him, most people should be able to do the same.

Krisann Muskievicz

Dr. Brody was on my dissertation committee and during the preparation for my defense, in one conversation he challenged one of my ideas and said, “If we are people who say that words matter, then what are you saying here?”  I have repeated that sentence at select times throughout the years since, thinking of him every time. One of the seminar courses Dr. Brody taught at UTMB then became his book The Future of Bioethics, and he told the students in the course that they would be acknowledged in the book. A few semesters after it was published, a student in the fledgling Medical Humanities program that I was starting at Schreiner University stopped me on the Quad to ask me if I knew I was named in this book that they had checked out from the library. That moment was not about me– it was about a conversation that preceded us and will extend beyond us, one of the many threads of the Institute for the Medical Humanities.

A personal note is that he was generous with his time and with his library. As I was writing, he loaned me several margin-filled books and I kept them safely in my home office. During a distracted moment, my toddler got ahold of one of the books I borrowed from Dr. Brody and within seconds, the book was full of scribbles. I ordered a new copy of that title and offered back the replacement with an apology. Dr. Brody chuckled and was unphased at losing his annotated book. He kindly said I could keep that copy as a memento (ah, until Ike).

Alina Bennett

I always called Dr. Brody, Dr. Brody. It seems like a lot of folks never made it to calling him anything but Dr. Brody. He had stopped seeing patients by the time he sat on my qualifying committee, but he never stopped being a healer. I remember sneezing over 30 times during one of his classes and apologizing afterwards, saying that I was on allergy meds, but nothing was helping. He asked if I’d want some advice from an old doctor. I couldn’t wait to hear what he had to share, and Dr. Brody put on an invisible coat and became the humanistic healer. He told me about how allergy medications today are similar to allergy medications from the 1950s. It’s just that in the 50’s, some people experienced drowsiness when they took those meds. In an effort to create products that could be labeled as non-drowsy, drug companies halved the active ingredients in their formulations. He said that this was great because no one got sleepy from the meds, but this also meant that lots of people no longer experienced symptom relief. I realized that despite taking medications for seasonal allergies, I might not be getting any better because I might be one of the people who needed a higher dose and that I might be someone who got drowsy. This was a 5-minute interaction but as I shared with my co-author, Dr. Eagan, it has stuck with me. I talked to my physician all those years ago, I still take the changed regimen of three allergy meds, and I make it through my day not only symptom free but with plenty of energy. In bringing my broken story to Dr. Brody, he helped sew it back together in the humanistic healer’s way. Using historical threads to help me understand my experience in the larger context of time while empowering me to reach back out to my doctor for more help. Our conversation inspired me to reflect on moral questions about balancing the burdens of an intervention that only affect some users against creating a less useful tool that could be used by all and illustrated, by way of example, that equipping healers with the deep learnings of the humanities just might be the best way to help them realize the goal of doing what is right for the patient who is in front of them. I am grateful to have witnessed firsthand how a healer can bring the lessons of history to bear in a simple conversation about unmanageable sneezing.

Dr. Sheena Eagan

Dr. Alina Bennett

Dr. Nicole Piemonte

Dr. Jiin-Yu Chen

Dr. Jason E. Glenn

Dr. Krisann Muskievicz