Vasantha Muthuswamy (12 July 1948 – 21 February 2023)[1] was an Indian physician and bioethicist, head of the Indian Council of Medical Research's Division of Basic Medical Sciences, Traditional Medicine, and Bioethics, and the Division of Reproductive Health and Nutrition, from 1990 to 2008.
She participated in international organizations and projects focused on bioethics, and was a noted critic of ethics dumping.
Muthuswamy was born in Madras (now Chennai), the daughter of Shri R. Seetharaman and Shrimati Tirupura Sundari.
[2][3] Muthuswamy began her medical career in 1979, in the Toxaemia Research Unit at Vanivilas Women and Children Hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru).
In 1997, she was a World Health Organization (WHO) Visiting Fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.