Larry Gostin was born in New York City in 1949, the son of Joseph and Sylvia Gostin. He received his B.A. in psychology from the State University of New York at Brockport in 1971 and his J.D. from Duke Law School in 1974. He was an adjunct professor at Harvard University from 1986 to 1994 and went on to be a professor of law at Georgetown University's Law Center and a professor of law and public health at Johns Hopkins University's School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Career in health law
From January 1984 to 1985, Gostin was general secretary of the National Council for Civil Liberties in the United Kingdom. From 1986 to 1994, he was executive director of the American Society for Law, Medicine, and Bioethics. He worked on Hillary Clinton's health plan, serving as chairman of the health information privacy and public health committees of the President's Task Force on Health Care Reform. His proposed Model State Emergency Health Powers Act ignited a firestorm of controversy across the ideological spectrum, from Phyllis Schlafly to LAMBDA, for being overly broad and ripe for abuse. He is also Professor of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University and Director of the Center for Law & the Public's Health at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities—A Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is Adjunct Professor of Public Health and Research Fellow at Oxford University. Gostin chairs a World Health Organization project on the law and ethics of public health strategies for pandemic influenza and is leading a drafting team on developing a Model Public Health Law for the World Health Organization. In a January 25, 2020 interview with NPR, Gostin argued against travel restrictions to prevent the spread of coronavirus, stating, “The risk is extraordinarily low for people in the United States.” https://www.npr.org/2020/01/25/799470705/a-travel-ban-to-contain-the-coronavirus-could-worsen-conditions-in-wuhan/ He is the Linda D. and Timothy J. O'Neill Professor of Global Health Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he directs the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law., O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University
2006, the IOM awarded Gostin the Adam Yarmolinsky Medal.
He has received the Rosemary Delbridge Memorial Award from the National Consumer Council for the person "who has most influenced Parliament and government to act for the welfare of society."
Received the Key to Tohoko University for distinguished contributions to human rights in mental health.
At the CDC Public Health Law Conference in 2006, he received the Public Health Law Association Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award "in recognition of a career devoted to using law to improve the public's health."
He is an elected fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution.
