The practice of medicine and health care as a social phenomenon is anchored in medical ethics and public health law. In the case of a scientific discipline, whose practical application and fundamental research are concerned ultimately with preventing, combating and alleviating sickness and suffering, these ethical and legal - or normative - aspects are hardly ever far away, be it in preventive health care, patient care, human research, animal experiments, or in the training for the profession. Ethics and law, in close relationship together, constitute the social framework within which the aims of medicine and health care are realised. To research, teach, (further) develop and make more explicit this essentially humanity-orientated core of medicine: this is a duty to which each new generation ought to commit itself afresh. The professorship Normative Aspects of Medicine is an affirmation that this responsibility has been recognized and accepted.

The title of his inaugural lecture was 'Met recht en reden. Het gemeenschappelijke belang van medische ethiek en gezondheidsrecht'.