Hastings Center Report

words on a pad that say mental health apps

Digital Mental Health Tools and AI Therapy Chatbots: A Balanced Approach to Regulation

Abstract: Digital mental health tools (DMHTs) offer a potential solution to overcoming economic, cultural, and geographic barriers to the increasing demand for mental health care, but their adoption raises significant...

Hastings Center Report

Governance of Direct-to-User Digital Mental Health Tools: Emphasizing Transparency over Paternalism

Abstract: Digital mental health tools are increasingly used outside traditional clinical settings, creating an engagement paradigm beyond the existing regulatory scope, as noted by Amitabha Palmer and David Schwan in...

Hastings Center Report

graphic of phone app that says mental health support, how are you feeling today

The Ethics of Humanlikeness in AI Therapy Chatbots

Abstract: What is a good use of digital mental health technologies, including AI therapy chatbots (AITCs)? In my commentary on Amitabha Palmer and David Schwan’s article “Digital Mental Health Tools...

Hastings Center Report

The Fundamental Fallacy of “Empathic AI”

Abstract: “Empathic AI” is being adopted in clinics as a means of offloading some of the work of clinician-patient encounters. Indeed, a recent study reported that generative large language models...

Hastings Center Report

older black couple kneeling beside a beige dog

Why We Can Thrive past Seventy-Five: In Favor of Efforts to Extend the Human Lifespan

Abstract: About ten years ago, Ezekiel Emanuel wrote an article extolling the benefits of dying at seventy-five. Since then, longevity and aging interest, research, and funding have exploded. Much of...

Hastings Center Report

Who Carries the Responsibility for Health Care Carbon Reduction?

Abstract: Policy-makers, doctors, organizations, and academics who arepersuaded that health care decarbonization is an ethical mandate are grappling with ethical and effective implementation of measures to support this goal. Health care...

Hastings Center Report

Finding Disability in Everyday Life

Abstract: This commentary explicates the social and cultural work of the word “disability” by reviewing the history of the civil and human rights movements and of legislation establishing people with...

Hastings Center Report

Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine: How Conscience Protections Preserved Mifepristone Access

Abstract: People in the bioethics field generally agree that clinicians should have reasonable freedom to practice according to their moral and religious convictions. But this general position leaves room for...

The Hastings Center Report explores the ethical, legal, and social issues in medicine, health care, public health, and the life sciences. Six issues of the pioneering bioethics journal are published each year, containing an assortment of essays, columns on legal and policy developments, case studies of issues in clinical care and institutional administration, caregivers’ stories, peer-reviewed scholarly articles, and book reviews.

To access supporting information for articles in the Hastings Center Report, such as tables, figures, and appendices that do not appear in the journal itself, see this page.

Authors come from an assortment of professions and academic disciplines and bring a range of perspectives and political opinions. We welcome submissions from new authors. The Report’s readership includes physicians, nurses, scholars of many stripes, administrators, social workers, health lawyers, and others.

For permissions, contact Wiley Online Library.

ISSN: 0093-0334; online ISSN: 1552-146X LC: 75-64303, publication no. 108810
Publisher: The Hastings Center for Bioethics
Bioethics Journal
(Ethics)(Health Care Sciences & Services)(Medical Ethics)(Social Sciences, Biomedical)

The Hastings Center for Bioethics

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