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The Hastings Center Bioethics Timeline
“Bioethics” has been defined in several different ways. Most broadly, it is the interdisciplinary study of ethical, legal, and social issues arising in the life sciences and health care. Though...Page
TRANSCRIPT: Unpacking Neglected Factors to Ensure Impact
February 7, 2023 Transcription by machine — may contain errors Elizabeth Lanphier Want to welcome you to today’s second installment of Bioethics with Bigger Impact. I’m Elizabeth Lanphier. I’m a coeditor of...Read “TRANSCRIPT: Unpacking Neglected Factors to Ensure Impact”
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes 13 New Fellows
The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of the 2023 fellows. Hastings Center fellows are a group of more than 200 individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has...Page
Public Events Series: The Art of Flourishing: Conversations on Disability
The Art of Flourishing: Conversations on Disability was a series of six public events held between 2019 and 2022 in which scholars, artists, writers, and thought leaders with disabilities reflected...Read “Public Events Series: The Art of Flourishing: Conversations on Disability”
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PRESS RELEASE: 06.10.10 New Book Compares Health Care in New York, Paris, and London
(Garrison, NY) Why do other countries spend less on health care and yet achieve near-universal coverage and often better outcomes than the United States? This question has come up repeatedly...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 06.10.10 New Book Compares Health Care in New York, Paris, and London”
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PRESS RELEASE: 1-27-14 Humans in Nature: The World as We Find It and The World as We Create It
People are increasingly concerned about the extent to which technology enables us to alter nature: causing the extinction of plants and animals, genetically modifying crops and livestock, using synthetic biology...Hastings Center News
New Book by Hastings Cofounder Daniel Callahan
In his new book, Daniel Callahan, cofounder and President Emeritus of The Hastings Center, takes on five global crises: climate change, food shortages, water shortages and quality, chronic illness and...Page
Ethics of Nature, Human Nature, and Biotechnology
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Nature, Human Nature, and Biotechnology Moral views about nature—claims that nature or a natural state of affairs has value—are important in contemporary...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes 24 New Fellows
The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 24 new fellows. Hastings Center fellows are a group of more than 200 individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has...Hastings Center News
Debating Modern Medical Technologies: The Politics of Safety, Effectiveness, and Patient Access
Does a new medicine or diagnostic test work? Is it safe? Should the government approve it and insurers pay for it? The answers are not as straightforward as they may...Hastings Center News
New Book: Human Flourishing in an Age of Gene Editing
New book edited by Hastings Center scholars explores fundamental questions about the nature and well-being of human beings at a time when a revolutionary new biotechnology could permanently change the human species.Read “New Book: Human Flourishing in an Age of Gene Editing”
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PRESS RELEASE 9-26-2018: Debating Modern Medical Technologies: The Politics of Safety, Effectiveness, and Patient Access
Does a new medicine or diagnostic test work? Is it safe? Should the government approve it and insurers pay for it? The answers are not as straightforward as they may...Page
Transcript: New Ethical Questions and 21st Century Genomics
Read “Transcript: New Ethical Questions and 21st Century Genomics”
Hastings Center News
New Hastings Center Fellows Elected
The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of eight new Fellows. Hastings Center Fellows are a group of individuals of outstanding accomplishment, whose work has informed scholarship and/or...Page
Ethics and the End of Life
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: End of Life Care The central philosophical question in end-of-life care is how to make decisions surrounding the numerous choices about what...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 9/14/13 Synthetic Biology and Morality: New Book Explores Ethical Questions about Creating “Artificial Life”
Synthetic biology aims to design and build organisms to serve human ends, such as producing inexpensive biofuels and developing new kinds of medicines. But this new form of biotechnology also...Bioethics Forum Essay
What Dr. Seuss Saw at the Golden Years Clinic
“Improving patient experience” has become the mantra of many health care facilities in a highly competitive and regulated environment. But just what is it about the patient experience that needs...From Bioethics Briefings
Why a Bioethics Briefing Book?
I arrived at The Hastings Center for my first tour of duty in the fall of 1979, and it did not take long to realize that the Center was working...Page
Hastings Center Report Submission Guidelines
General Manuscript Submission and Review The Hastings Center Report takes a broad understanding of bioethics. We welcome manuscript submissions that address social and ethical issues in health care, the life sciences, and...Hastings Center News
New Hastings Center Fellows Elected
The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 12 new Fellows. Hastings Center Fellows are a group of more than 200 individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has...Page
TRANSCRIPT: Towards Navigating Danger and Promise Together — Editing the Human Genome
Transcript generated by machine and may contain errors Dani Pacia Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Hastings Center event toward navigating danger and Promise together editing the human genome. This discussion...Read “TRANSCRIPT: Towards Navigating Danger and Promise Together — Editing the Human Genome”
Bioethics Forum Essay
After the Media Frenzy, Preventing Another ‘Guatemala’
I might easily have missed it. I was being a compulsive historian, going to one more archive (having already been to many) to find more material for what would become...Read “After the Media Frenzy, Preventing Another ‘Guatemala’”
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Ethics and Environment
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Hastings Center Bioethics BriefingThe issues that arise in environmental health ethics are complex, multifaceted, dynamic, and global in scope. Finding satisfactory solutions...Page
Faculty
Michelle Brown-Yazzie Michelle Brown-Yazzie is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and is of Salish & Kootenai and Oglala Lakota descent. She is of the Táchii’nii Clan and is...Bioethics Forum Essay
Lavish Dwarf Entertainment
A dwarf walks into a bar. I was searching for a funny anecdote that would begin with that sentence when I ran into Danny Black, a dwarf who has walked...Page
TRANSCRIPT: Can AI Improve Healthcare for Everyone?
September 13, 2023 Transcript automatically generated and may contain errors Briana Lopez-Patino: Hey? Hello! Welcome! Just wanted to remind you all that the audience is not audible or visible. But...Page
Press Release: 5/7/2013 Hastings Center Calls on Health Care Professionals and Organizations to Meet Standards for Good Care Near the End of Life
(Garrison, NY) People with chronic or life-threatening illnesses often experience problems with their care, including confusion and conflict over how to make good decisions, poor communication with care providers, inadequate...Bioethics Forum Essay
Time for the American Anthropological Association to Apologize
Last week, the journal Human Nature published via open access an article I wrote following a year of historical research. That article, “Darkness’s Descent on the American Anthropological Association: A...Read “Time for the American Anthropological Association to Apologize”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Protecting Research Participants: Why, How, and How Much?
Clinical research with human subjects is key to progress in understanding and improving human health. Research of this type that is supported by the U.S. government follows a system of...Read “Protecting Research Participants: Why, How, and How Much?”
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The Five Horsemen of the Modern World
Global warming, food shortages, water shortages and quality, chronic illness and obesity – these worldwide crises share striking similarities: each is getting worse, despite extensive and concerted efforts to control...Hastings Center News
New Hastings Fellows Elected
The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 18 new Fellows. Hastings Center Fellows are a group of individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has informed scholarship and/or public...Page
Ethics and Aging
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: AgingThere is a steady rise in world population growth with the fastest proportional increase coming from the elderly. Technological advances in medicine...Bioethics Forum Essay
Should We Get Ready for Prime Time?
For the first few years after my husband Howard died, I talked to him often. These were not ghostly, paranormal encounters; I was just thinking out loud about my life...Page
TRANSCRIPT: Communicating Ethical Challenges in Crises
Novmber 15, 2022 Transcription by machine — may contain errors Elizabeth Lanphier So thank you all for being here today. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to this inaugural session...Read “TRANSCRIPT: Communicating Ethical Challenges in Crises”
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For The Media
Please direct media queries to:Susan Gilbert, communications directorgilberts@thehastingscenter.org845-424-4040, ext. 244 Hastings Center News:Read the News Archive About the Hastings Center:The Hastings Center is a nonpartisan ethics research institution founded in...Page
Synthetic Biology and Morality: Artificial Life and the Bounds of Nature
Edited by Gregory E. Kaebnick and Thomas H. Murray (MIT Press, 2013) Synthetic biology, which aims to design and build organisms that serve human needs, has potential applications that range...Read “Synthetic Biology and Morality: Artificial Life and the Bounds of Nature”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Fox, Bosk, and Rothman: An Appreciation of Three Scholars of Medicine
Read “Fox, Bosk, and Rothman: An Appreciation of Three Scholars of Medicine”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Inside a High School Bioethics Club
I founded a bioethics club at my high school in the beginning of my sophomore year. From a very young age, I always considered it important to do the “right...Page
PRESS RELEASE 1-10-2018: GOOD SPORT: WHY OUR GAMES MATTER AND HOW DOPING UNDERMINES THEM
New book by Hastings Center President Emeritus Thomas Murray examines the use of sports enhancements against the values that give athletic competition its meaning. In the wake of Olympic doping...Read “PRESS RELEASE 1-10-2018: GOOD SPORT: WHY OUR GAMES MATTER AND HOW DOPING UNDERMINES THEM”
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Ethics and Abortion
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: AbortionA central philosophical question in the abortion debate concerns the moral status of the embryo and fetus. Public opinion on abortion falls...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 07.11.11 Summertime, Vacations at National Parks, Corn, Baseball – They’re All Connected in a New Book About the Meaning of Nature
(Garrison, NY) “All natural,” the way Mother Nature intended it,” “it’s just human nature,” “that’s not natural.” The idea of nature and what we call natural does a lot of...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Offshoring Science: The Promise and Perils of the Globalization of Clinical Trials
Research ethics is often said to have been born of scandal. The field is regularly accused of having developed in response to particular cases and transgressions. Whether or not this...Read “Offshoring Science: The Promise and Perils of the Globalization of Clinical Trials”
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From Assisted Reproduction to Stem Cells: The Hastings Center Bioethics Briefing Book
Project launched in January 2008 Principal Investigator: Mary Crowley Funders: The Greenwall Foundation and The Lounsbery Foundation Purpose To provide campaigns, journalists, and policymakers with a ready reference on about three dozen issues in...Read “From Assisted Reproduction to Stem Cells: The Hastings Center Bioethics Briefing Book”
Hastings Center News
Good Sport: Why Our Games Matter and How Doping Undermines Them
In the wake of Olympic doping scandals and just before the Winter Games in Pyeongchang in February, a new book by Hastings Center President Emeritus Thomas Murray explores the use...Read “Good Sport: Why Our Games Matter and How Doping Undermines Them”
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes 14 New Fellows
The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 14 new Fellows.Page
Ethics and Enhancing Humans
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Enhancing Humans What counts as enhancement is not clear because what counts as normal is itself ambiguous. Enhancement technologies have the potential...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 08.18.11 Wesleyan University President Michael Roth Joins Hastings Center Board
(Garrison, NY) Historian and author Michael S. Roth has been elected to the Board of Directors of The Hastings Center.Roth, who has served as president of Wesleyan University since 2007,...Hastings Center News
Michele Moody-Adams Elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Hastings Center board member Michele Moody-Adams was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She is the Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia...Read “Michele Moody-Adams Elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences”
Bioethics Forum Essay
After Roe, What’s Next for End-of-Life Care?
The reversal of Roe may be the beginning of an onslaught on our freedoms. I want to add one more worry to the list and point to self-determination at life's end. Here we have Justice Neil Gorsuch to worry about.Page
Disrupting Ableism with Artful Activism
Part 3 of our online event series, “The Art of Flourishing: Conversations on Disability” What will it take to bring about lasting justice for disabled people in the United States?...Page
Ethics and Clinical Trials
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Clinical Trials Clinical trials are specifically designed to test the safety and efficacy of interventions in humans and are preceded by laboratory...Hastings Center News
Daniel Callahan, 1930-2019
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PRESS RELEASE: 11.29.30 How We Die, Award-Winning Classic, Updated for 2010
(Garrison, NY) In a new edition of How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter, Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D., Hastings Center board member and Fellow, discusses the state of end-of-life care...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 11.29.30 How We Die, Award-Winning Classic, Updated for 2010”
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Enjoying: Disability as a Creative Force
Part 5 of our series, “The Art of Flourishing: Conversations on Disability” To experience disabled joy is to feel pleasure, abundance, and fulfillment because of—not despite—disability. Whether through engaging with...Bioethics Forum Essay
What I Learned from Dan Callahan About Bioethics, Writing, and Leadership
Read “What I Learned from Dan Callahan About Bioethics, Writing, and Leadership”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Romanian Orphans: A Reconsideration of the Ethics of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project
Recently I had a Susan Reverby moment. Reverby is the Wellesley historian best known for unearthing the revelations of the Guatemalan syphilis and gonorrhea studies conducted by the United States Public Health...Read “Romanian Orphans: A Reconsideration of the Ethics of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project”
Our Team
Michael Roth
Michael S. Roth became the 16th president of Wesleyan University in 2007. He is a graduate of Wesleyan (1978) and received his Ph.D. in history from Princeton University (1984). In...Bioethics Forum Essay
How I Learned Bioethics in Medical School
The director of the medical intensive care unit did not like the idea of having a bioethicist around. But she agreed to the request, and there he was on rounds,...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Lady Writer and the Valkyrie: Magda Szabo’s Novel The Door
An old woman desperately needs medical attention. Yet she fiercely refuses every offer of help from friends, neighbors, and the local doctor. No one will get past her door, she...Read “The Lady Writer and the Valkyrie: Magda Szabo’s Novel The Door”
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Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Bioethical Issues
Edited by Gregory E. Kaebnick (McGraw-Hill, 2013) This volume features 20 pairs of brief and accessible essays that stake out contrasting positions on a wide range of issues, including the role...Page
Ethics and the Genomics
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Genomics, Behavior, and Social Outcomes Within the past decade, sequencing of the human genome and the rapid development of large-scale DNA testing...Page
The Physician Assistant: An Illustrated History
By Thomas E. Piemme, MD; Alfred M. Sadler, Jr., MD; Reginald D. Carter, PhD, PA; Ruth Ballweg, MPA, PA-C (Acacia Publishing, 2013) This is a concise history of the people,...Bioethics Forum Essay
Deceptive Market Practices in the Marketplace of Ideas
Over the last four decades, conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Hoover Institute, and Manhattan Institute have dominated the public...Read “Deceptive Market Practices in the Marketplace of Ideas”
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Humans in Nature: The World as We Find It and the World as We Create It
Gregory E. Kaebnick (Oxford University Press, 2013) Contemporary debates over issues as wide-ranging as the protection of wildernesses and endangered species, the spread of genetically modified organisms, the emergence of...Read “Humans in Nature: The World as We Find It and the World as We Create It”
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Are Workarounds Ethical?: Managing Moral Problems in Health Care Systems 1st Edition
Nancy Berlinger (Oxford University Press, 2016) How work gets done in complex health care systems is ethically important. When health care professionals and other staff are pressured to improvise, fix...Read “Are Workarounds Ethical?: Managing Moral Problems in Health Care Systems 1st Edition”
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We Belong To One Another: Disability and Family Making
Part 6 of our online event series, “The Art of Flourishing: Conversations on Disability” Ableism frames disability as a “family problem,” in which disability is a tragedy for nondisabled family...Read “We Belong To One Another: Disability and Family Making”
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Medicine and the Market: Equity v. Choice
Dan Callahan and Angela Wasunna (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) This book is the first to examine and analyze the international debate over the place of market ideas and practices in...Bioethics Forum Essay
Tribute to Robert M. Veatch: Human Rights and Other Commitments
Robert M. Veatch, a bioethics pioneer and the first research associate at The Hastings Center, died on November 9. An overarching theme was his commitment to human rights.Read “Tribute to Robert M. Veatch: Human Rights and Other Commitments”
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Ethics and Public Health
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Public Health Ethics and Law Public health encompasses what society does to assure the conditions that are necessary for its members to...Our Team
Joel Michael Reynolds
Joel Michael Reynolds Senior Advisor to The Hastings Center, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Disability Studies at Georgetown University, Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, and Faculty...Page
Questioning Cure: Disability, Identity, and Healing
Part 4 of our online event series, “The Art of Flourishing: Conversations on Disability” TRANSCRIPT Should cure be the ultimate aim of health care? Sometimes aiming at cure entails trying...Bioethics Forum Essay
Nationalizing IRBs for Biomedical Research – and for Justice
I know that when my medical school sends us all an announcement that we’ve broken a record for funded research, I’m supposed to be happy. Wrong week for that. Shortly...Read “Nationalizing IRBs for Biomedical Research – and for Justice”
From Bioethics Briefings
Nature, Human Nature, and Biotechnology
Framing the Issue From genetically modified foods to assisted reproduction to gene drives, an increasing number of social debates feature moral views about nature—claims, that is, that a naturally occurring...Page
Ethics & Human Research Submission Guidelines
Aims & Scope Ethics & Human Research (formerly IRB: Ethics & Human Research) aims to foster critical analysis of issues in science and health care that have implications for human...Page
Transcript | Vaccine Access, Vaccine Hesitancy: Challenges to Herd Immunity
A HASTINGS CENTER CONVERSATION WITH RHEA BOYD, MAYA GOLDENBERG, AND MILDRED SOLOMON The Hastings Center hosted “Vaccine Access, Vaccine Hesitancy: Challenges to Herd Immunity,” an online discussion of the ethical issues related...Read “Transcript | Vaccine Access, Vaccine Hesitancy: Challenges to Herd Immunity”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Improving Linguistic Justice and Accessibility in Bioethics Work
Bioethicists should practice linguistic justice, making our work accessible to people by using relatable language. It's key to improving health justice.Read “Improving Linguistic Justice and Accessibility in Bioethics Work”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Hastings, Botswana, and Edinburgh: Bioethics Meets Detective Fiction
In the bioethics world, all roads eventually lead to Hastings, whether that means the Center in Garrison, N.Y., or Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., where the Center was born in 1969 and lived...Read “Hastings, Botswana, and Edinburgh: Bioethics Meets Detective Fiction”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
A Guidebook to a Complex Land
Those involved in research with humans confront a host of ethical issues and a maze of regulations. James M. DuBois’s Ethics in Mental Health Research: Principles, Guidance, and Cases is...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 7-1-15 A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology from Slipping Beyond Our Control
Scientific research and emerging technologies have long held the promise of innovation, improved productivity, and cures for deadly diseases. But there is growing concern that technological development has become a...Page
Are Workarounds Ethical in Health Care Systems?
“There is more than one ‘clean hands’ problem in health care work,” writes Nancy Berlinger, a Hastings Center research scholar and a specialist in health care ethics, at the opening...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
What Makes IRBs Tick? An Empirical Analysis of IRBs and Their Relationship with Researchers
Robert Klitzman’s provocatively titled book, The Ethics Police? The Struggle to Make Human Research Safe, explores the often contentious relationship between the scientists who conduct human subjects research and the...Read “What Makes IRBs Tick? An Empirical Analysis of IRBs and Their Relationship with Researchers”
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PRESS RELEASE: 07.12.12 Medical Ethicists Face Cancer in New Book
(Garrison, NY) “Since my diagnosis, I had been immersed in a crash course in real-world medical ethics,” writes Rebecca Dresser, editor of Malignant: Medical Ethicists Confront Cancer, published by Oxford...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 07.12.12 Medical Ethicists Face Cancer in New Book”
Hastings Center News
How Much Control Should You Have Over Your Biological Data?
When you donate a sample of blood or saliva for research purposes, is it your property? What about the genetic and other data it contains? Should you be allowed to...Read “How Much Control Should You Have Over Your Biological Data?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Daniel Callahan: In Memoriam
Bioethics Forum Essay
Dying for Some Standards: Broken Medical Systems as Revealed by a New FDA Warning
I’d like to say I was shocked when a colleague sent me the warning letter from Eli Lilly relaying results of a French study that indicate a 30 percent increased risk...Read “Dying for Some Standards: Broken Medical Systems as Revealed by a New FDA Warning”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Womb Gay
Reading an excerpt from the new book Sex and War has got me thinking about the Mormons and California’s Prop 8. Sex and War features a meditation on how biology...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Good of the Body
The December 2015 United Nations meeting on climate change was an historic moment for global efforts to reduce harmful carbon emissions. While it gained the agreement about the future good...Hastings Center News
12 Outstanding Scholars Recognized for Work in Ethics of Disability, Transplantation, Mental Health Care, and Other Areas
The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 12 new fellows. Hastings Center fellows are a group of more than 200 individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has...Bioethics Forum Essay
On Naming Names
No names will be named in this essay. Which I guess makes it philosophy. Technically I am trained to do philosophy. I got my masters and my Ph.D. in a...SPECIAL EVENT
Re-Opening the Nation: Should We Turn to Immunity Testing?
Read “Re-Opening the Nation: Should We Turn to Immunity Testing?”
Our Team
Michele Goodwin
Michele Bratcher Goodwin is the Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy at Georgetown Law School. She is also co-faculty director of the O’Neill...Hastings Center News
Yes, We’re Animals: Why We Should Face Up to This Reality Now
In an age of new biotechnologies, from gene editing to neural enhancement, is there a tension in the idea that humans have special value because they’re somehow different or exceptional in nature? Dwelling on the idea that there’s something extraordinary about being human – and ignoring our kinship with life on our planet – is becoming a problem, says Melanie Challenger, an award-winning British writer and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics who has been a visiting scholar at The Hastings Center in November.Read “Yes, We’re Animals: Why We Should Face Up to This Reality Now”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Challenging Evolution?
We have long had the ability, we humans, to work outside the bounds of evolution. Dairy cattle, maize, and all sorts of dog breeds attest to that. It is unlikely...Bioethics Forum Essay
This Wasn’t the Plan: A Family Caregiver’s Recommended Readings from 2023
Work and life overlapped significantly for me in 2023. The timeframe for the latest project in the Bioethics for Aging Societies portfolio—a Greenwall Foundation-funded analysis of ways to support aging...Read “This Wasn’t the Plan: A Family Caregiver’s Recommended Readings from 2023”
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PRESS RELEASE: 10.12.10 Joseph J. Fins Elected to Institute of Medicine of the National Academies
Joseph J. Fins, M.D., chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and a Hastings Center board member, was elected to the Institute...Bioethics Forum Essay
New York City’s Involuntary Commitment Plan: Fulfilling a Moral Obligation?
After a string of violent crimes involving mentally ill people who are homeless, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan for police and emergency medical workers to involuntarily remove people with severe mental illness from the streets and bring them to hospitals for psychiatric evaluation. Mayor Adams said we have a “moral obligation” to help people who are mentally ill. But is this plan moral?Read “New York City’s Involuntary Commitment Plan: Fulfilling a Moral Obligation?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Aphasia, Communication, and Caregiving
What “recovery” really means in aphasia is left unsaid in this novel.Hastings Center News
Nancy Berlinger Co-Authors Palliative Care Recommendations
Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger is an author of a new policy statement on palliative care issued by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. The statement makes recommendations on...Read “Nancy Berlinger Co-Authors Palliative Care Recommendations”
Our Team
Karen J. Maschke
Karen Maschke has expertise on the ethical, regulatory and policy issues involving the development, assessment, and use of new biomedical technologies. She is the editor-in-chief of The Hastings Center’s journal Ethics...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Climate Agreement: Understanding, and Leveraging, Public Opinion
After years of fluctuating and troubled efforts, the nations of the world in December of 2015 came to the remarkable agreement to work together to reduce global warming. On June...Read “The Climate Agreement: Understanding, and Leveraging, Public Opinion”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Hastings Center at 50: Looking Back and Ahead
This year, The Hastings Center will celebrate its 50th anniversary. The Center was first located on the second floor of my house in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., with some overflow paperwork stored...Page
Ethics and the Family Caregiving
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Family Caregiving The central philosophical question in family caregiving is how to best support infrastructures of care in times where changes in...Bioethics Forum Essay
How to Make It Right: Covid Reparations
Reparations in various forms of compensation to the American victims of preventable Covid, who may experience lifelong health effects, is obligatory.Page
The Ideal of Nature
Edited by Gregory E. Kaebnick (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011) Going back at least to the writings of John Stuart Mill and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, people have argued for and against maintaining...Bioethics Forum Essay
Gene Drive Technology: Lessons of the Atomic Bomb
At the age of 15, in August 1945, I heard the radio announcement of the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. It left an indelible unsettled mark on my...Page
Science and Technology Ethics
Technology ethics: Technology ethics comprises values and ethical considerations that should guide regulation and oversight, protect privacy and confidentiality, and require responsible actions in the creation and use of technology....Page
Advancing Social Justice, Health Equity, and Community
TRANSCRIPT: February 9, 2021 Hello, good afternoon. If you’re on the East Coast and welcome to the annual Daniel Callahan lecture, advancing social justice, health, equity and Community. We are...Read “Advancing Social Justice, Health Equity, and Community”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Are Arguments about GMO Safety Really About Something Else?
The scientific consensus that food containing genetically modified organisms is safe seems ever stronger, yet the social controversy about GMOs seems only to grow as well. “Unhealthy Fixation,” a long article published...Read “Are Arguments about GMO Safety Really About Something Else?”
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Performance-Enhancing Technologies in Sports
Edited by Thomas H. Murray, Karen J. Maschke, and Angela A. Wasunna (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) This book brings together an interdisciplinary group of experts in bioethics, sports, law, and...Bioethics Forum Essay
Proof that I Like Penises
So, a new randomized control trial comes out showing that circumcision in adult males can dramatically reduce HIV infection rates, and all my friends who opted for circumcising their baby...Page
What Price Better Health: Hazards of the Research Imperative
Daniel Callahan (University of California Press, 2005) The idea that there is an absolute moral obligation to pursue medical research is deeply imbedded in American cultural and American health care....Read “What Price Better Health: Hazards of the Research Imperative”
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The Worth of a Child
Thomas H. Murray (University of California Press, 1996) What do children mean to their parents, and how far do parental obligations go? What, from the beginning of life to its...Page
Accountability: Patient Safety and Policy Reform, Hastings Center Studies in Ethics Series
Edited by Virginia A. Sharpe Georgetown University Press, September 2004 Purchase this book at amazon.com According to a recent Institute of Medicine report, as many as 98,000 Americans die each...Read “Accountability: Patient Safety and Policy Reform, Hastings Center Studies in Ethics Series”
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Bioethics and Racism
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Racism and Health Equity Racism threatens health equity by withholding resources people need for proper health based on morally arbitrary features like...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 09-03-2019 Human Flourishing in an Age of Gene Editing
Read “PRESS RELEASE: 09-03-2019 Human Flourishing in an Age of Gene Editing”
Bioethics Forum Essay
New York’s Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment Initiative: Positive Signs and a Path Forward
Recent policies by New York State Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams to identify homeless mentally ill people and remove them from the streets for involuntary...Read “New York’s Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment Initiative: Positive Signs and a Path Forward”
Hastings Center News
John Robertson Remembered
The Hastings Center is saddened by the death of John Robertson, a Hastings Center Fellow, on July 5. Robertson, 74, was the Vinson & Elkins Chair at the University of...Hastings Center News
What’s Actually Wrong with Sports Doping?
What’s actually wrong with doping—if all athletes had access to the same performance-enhancing drugs, wouldn’t that make competitions fair? If the purpose of sport is to maximize performance, shouldn’t we...Bioethics Forum Essay
Beyond Breaking News: Ways of Seeing Migrants and Their Children
Amid the volume of coverage and commentary on the politics of immigration and the consequences of crackdowns and criminalization, here is a selection of recent work – analysis, personal essay, fiction, mixed-media – that can spark the moral imagination.Read “Beyond Breaking News: Ways of Seeing Migrants and Their Children”
Our Team
Julie Chibbaro
Julie Chibbaro is a long-time teacher, mentor, and editor. She is the author of three novels, and numerous short stories and articles. Her books have won the American Book Award, the...Page
Hastings Center Journals: Subscribe
The Hastings Center Report The Hastings Center Report delivers provocative and probing writing on ethical dilemmas in medicine, health policy, and biotechnology. Six issues are published each year, containing an assortment of...Bioethics Forum Essay
Insights from Fictional Research Subjects
Mainstream research ethics rests on an incomplete foundation. For the most part, human subjects regulations and guidelines reflect the views of professionals and others who have never been subjects themselves. ...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Cofounder Willard Gaylin (1925-2022)
Willard Gaylin, an acclaimed psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and a pioneering scholar in bioethics who co-founded The Hastings Center, died on December 30. He was 97.Page
PRESS RELEASE 11-13-14: Shaping Our Selves: On Technology, Flourishing, and a Habit of Thinking
Hasting Center research scholar Erik Parens has taken part in many polarized debates about the use of medical and surgical technologies for human enhancement. While enthusiasts promise that such technologies will promote...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Speaking about Silence: The Need to Hear from Research Subjects
In Silent Partners: Human Subjects and Research Ethics, Rebecca Dresser extends her work on research ethics and the experience of illness into fruitful new territory, arguing that experienced research subjects...Read “Speaking about Silence: The Need to Hear from Research Subjects”
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PRESS RELEASE 4-5-2018: New in the Hastings Center Report: March-April 2018
Progress: Its Glories and Pitfalls Daniel Callahan In his new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Stephen Pinker, a cognitive psychologist and linguist at Harvard,...Read “PRESS RELEASE 4-5-2018: New in the Hastings Center Report: March-April 2018”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
The Nuts and Bolts of IRBs
Two different but useful guidebooks—Working With and Within IRBs: A Practical Guide for Investigators, Sponsors, and IRB Members, by Eileen Hilton and Deirdre Hall, andInstitutional Review Board: Management and Function,...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Questionable Research Practices Compel Subjects to Join Studies
What the Doctor Didn’t Say: The Hidden Truth About Medical Research, by Jerry Menikoff (with Edward Richards), is an insightful, clear, and engaging overview of some of the ethical and...Read “Questionable Research Practices Compel Subjects to Join Studies”
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ANA and AMA join AAMC and The Hastings Center as sponsors of “Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities”
NEW YORK/SILVER SPRING/CHICAGO, NOVEMBER 9 – The American Nurses Association and the American Medical Association join The Hastings Center, a global ethics leader, and the Association of American Medical Colleges Center...Page
Reprogenetics: Law, Policy, and Ethical Issues
Edited by Lori P. Knowles and Gregory E. Kaebnick (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) From the cloning of Dolly the sheep a decade ago to more recent advances in embryonic...From Bioethics Briefings
Torture: The Bioethics Perspective
Framing the Issue Torture occupies an odd position in that it is universally illegal and widely practiced. Despite many studies showing its inefficacy, more than half of the world’s nations...Our Team
Mercer Gary
Mercer Gary is a Hastings Center presidential scholar and an assistant professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at Drexel University. She was a postdoctoral fellow at The Hastings...Page
IRB Submission Guidelines
Authors’ Instructions IRB: Ethics & Human Research is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes scholarly articles offering insight on issues of critical importance to research with human subjects, including findings and analysis...Bioethics Forum Essay
Quixote Reimagined: Magical Realism Meets the Opioid Epidemic
Read “Quixote Reimagined: Magical Realism Meets the Opioid Epidemic”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Shame and Guilt in Minnesota
Over the past month, a petition asking the governor of Minnesota to investigate a research scandal at the University of Minnesota has been steadily gathering momentum. The scandal in question originated in...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 08.01.11 Social Challenges of Synthetic Biology Examined
(Garrison, NY) In the wake of last year’s creation of the first self-replicating cell with a synthetic genome – which was quickly followed by a request from President Barack Obama...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 08.01.11 Social Challenges of Synthetic Biology Examined”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Dr. Oz Can’t Afford Me
The first time the Dr. Oz show called me, I was simply too tired to deal. The story of Caster Semenya — the track athlete whose sex had been called...Page
Ethics and Pandemic Response
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Pandemics: The Ethics of Mandatory and Voluntary Interventions Nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPI) such as isolation and quarantine, school closures, and social distancing measures...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Recognizes Norman Daniels and Rebecca Dresser with 2023 Bioethics Founders’ Award
Norman Daniels, PhD, the Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Emeritus at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Rebecca Dresser,...Bioethics Forum Essay
Modern Day Mengeles
“No power in the world will make us deny our duty, or forget even for a moment our historical task of maintaining the freedom of our people.” — Joseph Goebbels...Bioethics Forum Essay
Could Alarm Over Genetic Manipulation Get in the Way of Environmental Conservation?
The American chestnut is basically defunct, unless science can rescue it. Genetic manipulation may be the answer.Read “Could Alarm Over Genetic Manipulation Get in the Way of Environmental Conservation?”
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Human Flourishing in an Age of Gene Editing
Bioethics Forum Essay
A Historic Intersex Awareness Day
This year’s Intersex Awareness Day, October 26, marks a historic pivot. Last week, Boston Children’s Hospital revealed that its physicians would no longer perform certain nonconsensual infant genital surgeries on babies born with atypical genitals. They join the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, which made a similar announcement in July and even apologized to its former intersex patients. Intersex advocates have been working toward this goal for decades.Bioethics Forum Essay
Calling on Doctors to Take the Lead in Fighting for Gun Control
The National Rifle Association recently condemned doctors who are against gun violence, telling us to stay in our lane. Reducing preventable deaths is the main lane for doctors. And despite...Read “Calling on Doctors to Take the Lead in Fighting for Gun Control”
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PRESS RELEASE: 03.24.11 Thomas H. Murray to Step Down as President of The Hastings Center
(Garrison, NY) Thomas H. Murray, president and CEO of The Hastings Center, announced that he will step down in 2012 from his leadership role at the bioethics research institution. Murray,...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 03.24.11 Thomas H. Murray to Step Down as President of The Hastings Center”
Hastings Center News
Improving Patient Safety in the Operating Room
How can health care systems increase the effectiveness of patient safety checklists? Nancy Berlinger, a Hastings Center research scholar, and Elizabeth Dietz, a project manager and research assistant, examine this...Page
Ethics and Climate Change
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. From Bioethics Briefings: Climate Change No issue demands greater care in balancing benefits and risks than responding to the threat of global climate change....Page
Ethics and Stem Cells
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Stem CellsStem cells hold great promise for treating degenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and diabetes, understanding genetic illnesses, and answering fundamental...From Bioethics Briefings
Enhancing Humans
Framing the Issue When Guttenberg invented the printing press, making the written word accessible to the masses, he could have hardly envisioned today’s world where the entirety of human knowledge...Bioethics Forum Essay
Is It Ethical to Reduce Prison Sentences in Exchange for Organ Donation?
A bill filed in the Massachusetts House of Representatives would allow prisoners who choose to donate organs or bone marrow for transplantation to be eligible for reduced sentences. Is such a policy ethical?Read “Is It Ethical to Reduce Prison Sentences in Exchange for Organ Donation?”
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center’s Rosemary Gibson Honored for Enhancing Health Care Quality
Read “Hastings Center’s Rosemary Gibson Honored for Enhancing Health Care Quality”
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MEDIA ADVISORY: 02.24.11 Erik Parens to Speak About Behavioral Genetics at Feb. 28 Meeting of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues
(Garrison, NY) Hastings Center Scholar Erik Parens, PhD, will speak about behavioral genetics to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues on Monday, February 28. The meeting kicks off...Page
Ethical Issues in Synthetic Biology
Principal Investigators: Gregory Kaebnick, Thomas H. Murray, and Erik Parens Funder: The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Launched in 2009, when synthetic biology was a new technology advancing rapidly, this project explored raises ethical...Bioethics Forum Essay
Continuous Health Monitoring: Greater Self-Knowledge or TMI?
For millions of health-conscious Americans, digital technology has been a boon, providing increasingly sophisticated fitness trackers. Researchers speak excitedly about a new frontier of “continuous health monitoring,” with the potential to detect diseases and aliments in their incipient stages. It also raises a host of disturbing questions about health surveillance. Will these devices really empower us? Will they compromise us as autonomous individuals?Read “Continuous Health Monitoring: Greater Self-Knowledge or TMI?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Primates in Medical Research: A Matter of Convenience, not Sound Science
What are the current and future potential uses of nonhuman primates in research? The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is examining this question.Read “Primates in Medical Research: A Matter of Convenience, not Sound Science”
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Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society
Daniel Callahan (Georgetown University Press, 1995) In this wise and thought-provoking review of present attitudes and public policy toward aging and death, Callahan, cofounder of The Hastings Center, faults our...Page
The Five Horsemen of the Modern World
Daniel Callahan (Columbia University Press, 2016) In recent decades, we have seen five perilous and interlocking trends dominate global discourse: irreversible climate change, extreme food and water shortages, rising chronic...Bioethics Forum Essay
Envisioning Civic Palliative Care
Dying cannot be understood properly, or responded to well, without recourse to the connections between the dying experience and the larger social structures that make up a social and civic...Bioethics Forum Essay
Doping, Corruption, and International Intrigue: Olympic Sport Confronts a Moral Crisis
I suspected the two alibi witnesses were lying. The accused in the case, Alexei Melnikov, coached long distance walkers and runners for ARAF, the All-Russia Athletic Federation. Lilya Shobukova and...Read “Doping, Corruption, and International Intrigue: Olympic Sport Confronts a Moral Crisis”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Working Around the System: Vaccine Navigators and Vaccine Equity
Vaccine navigators have emerged as a response to the complexity of mass vaccination for Covid-19.Read “Working Around the System: Vaccine Navigators and Vaccine Equity”
Our Team
Gretchen Greene
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Disaster Planning and Bioethics
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Disaster Planning and Public Health Bioethics Briefing A public health emergency exists when the health consequences of a decision have the potential...Bioethics Forum Essay
How “America First” Undermines Our Health
People value their health. It allows them to pursue their aims and enjoy their lives, and it contributes to their well-being. But health is not only good for particular healthy...Hastings Center News
Watch the Livestream Tonight: Ethics of Technology Keynote Lecture by Hastings Center’s Josephine Johnston
The Hastings Center’s director of research Josephine Johnston will explore how parental responsibilities are challenged by new genetic technologies in the keynote address of the “Ethics of Technology,” a yearlong lecture series at Washington & Lee University that begins on September 26.Page
Hastings Center Report Press Kit
Latest Issue Access content from the latest issue and archives here. Editors Gregory E. Kaebnick, Editor kaebnickg@thehastingscenter.org 845-424-4040, ext. 227 Laura Haupt, Managing Editor hauptl@thehastingscenter.org 845-424-4040, ext. 212 Nora Porter, Art Director portern@thehastingscenter.org...Bioethics Forum Essay
Of Kinks, Crimes, and Kinds: The Paraphilias Proposal for the DSM-5
When is a kinky interest really sick? That’s the central question the Paraphilias Sub-Work Group of the American Psychiatric Association has had to face as they’ve developed proposed revisions for...Read “Of Kinks, Crimes, and Kinds: The Paraphilias Proposal for the DSM-5”
Our Team
Nancy Berlinger
Nancy Berlinger is a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center and a Hastings Center fellow. Her training is in the humanities. Her current scholarship and empirical research focus on...Hastings Center News
Leon R. Kass Named 2016 Beecher Award Recipient
Leon R. Kass has been named the recipient of The Hastings Center’s 2016 Henry Knowles Beecher Award. For more than four decades, Dr. Kass has been deeply engaged with ethical...Page
Graphic Medicine: Comics Turn a Critical Eye on Health Care
Sarah Glazer A patient arrives in the emergency room apparently in a comatose state. But is he really unconscious or just faking? The young doctors on duty are skeptical. Failing...Read “Graphic Medicine: Comics Turn a Critical Eye on Health Care”
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MEDIA ADVISORY: 10.07.10 Author Who Revealed Unethical Guatemala Syphilis Study Writes Follow-up for Bioethics Forum
(Garrison, NY) The researcher whose revelations about unethical U.S. studies on syphilis in Guatemala in the 1940’s lead to apologies from the Obama administration last week has written a commentary...Bioethics Forum Essay
Do We Have a Moral Obligation to Genetically Enhance our Children?
The Oxford philosopher Julian Savulescu, among others, has argued that prospective parents engaging in embryo selection using preimplantation genetic diagnosis not only may seek to have genetically enhanced children but...Read “Do We Have a Moral Obligation to Genetically Enhance our Children?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Synthetic Biology: A Study in Reinvention
An article in the October issue of Discover Magazine has a great line from Drew Endy, a bioengineer at Stanford University who has become one of the foremost public figures in the field of...Bioethics Forum Essay
How to Avoid a Genetic Arms Race
Breakthroughs in our ability to change the genes of organisms are generating novel capabilities for biological weapons, a form of warfare that has been largely abandoned for decades. Guidance from scientists and bioethicists is needed to avert the threat.Bioethics Forum Essay
Thinking Beyond “The Border”: American Bioethics and the Repair of U.S. Immigration Policy
How should the American bioethics community respond to the latest “crisis at the border,” focused on record numbers of unaccompanied minors – children and teenagers traveling from the Northern Triangle...Read “Thinking Beyond “The Border”: American Bioethics and the Repair of U.S. Immigration Policy”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Imperfect Solutions to Driverless Car Dilemmas
Three rules for driverless vehicles were announced by the German Transport Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, in a September 8th interview with Wirtschafts Woche. In English translation the rules are: (1) “It...From Bioethics Briefings
Brain Injury: Neuroscience and Neuroethics
Framing the Issue The national conversation over Terri Schiavo illustrated how questions about severe brain injury became central to the past decade’s most convulsive bioethics debate. As is well appreciated...Bioethics Forum Essay
Daniel Callahan – A Remembrance
Hastings Center News
Artistic Visions for Disrupting Ableism
What will it take to bring about lasting justice for disabled people in the United States? When will every body—and every voice—be indispensable? Poets and activists Lateef McLeod and D.J. Savarese explored their ideas...Hastings Center News
Stem Cell Treatments: Assessing the Evidence
Should the Food and Drug Administration regulate some or all stem cell interventions? What standards of evidence should be used for making claims that stem cell interventions are safe and...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 09.16.10 With Growing U.S. Support for Personalized Medicine, a Look at Ethical Dilemmas
(Garrison, NY) As government support for personalized medicine grows, a consumer advocate, a patient, and bioethicists explore ethical controversies. Direct-to-consumer genetic tests, privacy, targeted cancer therapies, and Henrietta Lacks are...Page
Ethics and Conscience Clauses
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. From Bioethics Briefings: Conscience Clauses, Health Care Providers, and ParentsConscientious objection in health care is the refusal to perform a legal role or responsibility...Our Team
Thomas H. Murray
Thomas H. Murray was president of The Hastings Center from 1999 to 2012. He was formerly the director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics in the School of Medicine at...Page
PRESS RELEASE 08-16-2018: New in The Hastings Center Report, July-August 2018
On Avoiding Deep Dementia Norman L. Cantor To avoid prolonged dementia, the author has written an advanced directive to prohibit the provision of life-sustaining interventions, including hydration and nutrition, should...Read “PRESS RELEASE 08-16-2018: New in The Hastings Center Report, July-August 2018”
Our Team
Erik Parens
Erik Parens is a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center and director of the Center’s Initiative in Bioethics and the Humanities. He is a Hastings Center fellow. He has...Our Team
Rosemary Gibson
Rosemary Gibson writes and lectures about health care, health care reform, Medicare, and patient safety. She is a senior advisor at The Hastings Center. She led national health care quality...Page
Should the FDA Have Approved the New Alzheimer’s Drug?
Should Patients Take It? Monday, July 12, 2021 The Food and Drug Administration’s accelerated approval of a new Alzheimer’s drug has created a firestorm of praise and outrage. Dissenters include...Read “Should the FDA Have Approved the New Alzheimer’s Drug?”
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PRESS RELEASE: 07.15.10 Bioethics Beach Reading, Summer 2010 Edition
(Garrison, NY) What if I were grown only so my organs could be harvested, and I had to care for others whose organs are being taken, too, while I wait for...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 07.15.10 Bioethics Beach Reading, Summer 2010 Edition”
Hastings Center News
Remembering the Reverend Frank Geer
The Hastings Center is saddened by the passing of the Rev. Francis (Frank) Hartley Geer, who served on the Hastings board from 2010 to 2020. He died on July 19...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 2-17-15 Wendell Wallach Named Senior Advisor to The Hastings Center
The Hastings Center has appointed Wendell Wallach, an international expert on the ethical and governance concerns posed by emerging technologies, to be a senior advisor. Wallach is a consultant, an ethicist,...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 2-17-15 Wendell Wallach Named Senior Advisor to The Hastings Center”
Our Team
Wendell Wallach
Wendell Wallach is an internationally recognized expert on the ethical and governance concerns posed by emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence and neuroscience. He is a consultant, an ethicist, and a...Page
Ethics & Human Research 2
Ethics & Human Research (formerly IRB: Ethics & Human Research) aims to foster critical analysis of issues in science and health care that have implications for human biomedical and behavioral...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 2-11-15 Improving End-of-Life Care: Lessons from 40 Years of Work
Although there has been progress in improving care near the end of life, early “optimism that the establishment of patients’ legal and ethical rights to make decisions about their own...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 2-11-15 Improving End-of-Life Care: Lessons from 40 Years of Work”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Bioethics, Nazi Analogies, and the Coronavirus Pandemic
The year 2020 will be remembered as the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. But the pandemic was not alone in creating fear and dismay and raising ethical questions. Think of the rise in antisemitism, police violence against Black people, protests against immigration, and rallies by groups espousing Nazi slogans and symbols. Hate crimes, including murder, are the highest in years, according to the most recent FBI report, and were particularly aimed at Jews and Hispanics. Asian-Americans have been targeted as carriers of the so-called “China virus.”Read “Bioethics, Nazi Analogies, and the Coronavirus Pandemic”
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Festival of Genomics
Date: November 3-5, 2015 An event to define the future of genomics… The Festival of Genomics is a celebration of the transformational science of our age. If you’re a scientist,...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Recognizes Ruth Faden for Lifetime Achievement in Bioethics
Ruth Faden, PhD, MPH, founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Bioethics, was named the recipient of The Hastings Center’s 2019 Henry Knowles Beecher Award for lifetime achievement in bioethics.Read “Hastings Center Recognizes Ruth Faden for Lifetime Achievement in Bioethics”
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PRESS RELEASE: 04.14.10 Three Hastings Center Fellows Chosen for Obama’s Bioethics Commission; Chair Is Also a Fellow
(Garrison, NY) Hastings Center Fellows Anita Allen, Christine Grady, and Daniel Sulmasy were appointed to President Barack Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, the White House announced. Amy...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 04.01.10 Baseball season opener: athletes and ethicists look at fairness in sport
(Garrison,NY) Just in time for baseball’s opening day, a series of articles in the Hastings Center Report asks what constitutes fairness in elite sports and what it takes to stop cheating. New...Page
Hastings Center Report
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Only PhD Scientist in Congress Speaks About Truth, Politics, and Human Flourishing
At a time when facts are distorted, disregarded, and ignored in policy making and political discourse, the need in Washington for seekers and defenders of truth has perhaps never been...Read “The Only PhD Scientist in Congress Speaks About Truth, Politics, and Human Flourishing”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Palliative Care vs. Cancer Research
The death of former first lady Barbara Bush at age 92 was noteworthy in many ways. She was by all accounts smart, sharp and funny, and a fine, helpful wife...Bioethics Forum Essay
Nature Isn’t What It Used To Be
Is the end in sight for wilderness? A recent opinion piece in the New York Times, by the science journalist Christopher Solomon, says it is. “There’s a heresy echoing through America’s woods and...Hastings Center News
Hastings Scholar Nancy Berlinger Selected for Bellagio Center Residency
Research Scholar Nancy Berlinger is doing original research at The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center on the shores of Lake Como, Italy, as part of a selective academic writing residency. The...Read “Hastings Scholar Nancy Berlinger Selected for Bellagio Center Residency”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Living through the Pandemic in New Zealand
In New Zealand we have been saved from the worst devastations of Covid-19 by a firm government, courage and care for one another, and our geographic “moat.” With the recent minor surge of cases, our government has, once again, encouraged us to respond as a team of 5 million. We have been guided by the slogan “Be kind.”Page
PRESS RELEASE: 10-9-13 New Guidelines Call on Clinicians to Improve Decision-making for Seriously Ill Children
An article published online in Pediatrics discusses new ethics guidelines on decision-making and care for children with life-threatening illnesses. It calls on physicians to seek collaborations with palliative care physicians, to develop...Bioethics Forum Essay
Natural, Medical, Political Childbirth
“It felt selfish to put my baby at serious risk by pursuing a vaginal birth,” writes Kristen Terlizzi in a collection of essays published recently in Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics....Bioethics Forum Essay
Shocking the Conscience: Justice Department versus the Health of Immigrant Women and Children
In April, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it would criminally prosecute migrants who had been apprehended after crossing the U.S.-Mexico. border. An immediate consequence of this announcement, explained in...Read “Shocking the Conscience: Justice Department versus the Health of Immigrant Women and Children”
Our Team
Joseph J. Fins
Joseph J. Fins, M.D., M.A.C.P., F.R.C.P., is The E. William Davis, Jr. M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics and chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Genetics Symposium Draws Journalists from Around the World
Is there a parental obligation to create “better” babies? Now that scientists can genetically edit plants and animals for agricultural and other purposes, what can we learn from the longstanding...Read “Hastings Center Genetics Symposium Draws Journalists from Around the World”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethics at the Chocolate Factory
Two women are being trained for work on a factory assembly line. As products arrive on a conveyor belt, their task is to wrap each product and place it back...Bioethics Forum Essay
Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
If the mutilated body of one of your research subjects is discovered in a blood-soaked bathroom, who should investigate the death? If you want to be cleared of blame, it’s...Page
Appeals to Nature in Debates about Biotechnology and the Environment
Principal Investigator: Gregory E. Kaebnick Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities Kaebnick led a comparative study of how ideas about nature are invoked in contemporary moral and policy debates about medical biotechnology, agricultural...Read “Appeals to Nature in Debates about Biotechnology and the Environment”
Expert Contributor
Carl Elliott
Carl Elliott, a Hastings Center Fellow, is a professor at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota. His most recent book is White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on...Page
PRESS RELEASE 8/5/2013 Rosemary Gibson Named Senior Advisor to The Hastings Center
(Garrison, NY) The Hastings Center has appointed Rosemary Gibson, author and national authority on patient safety and health care policy, to be a Senior Advisor. In this role, Gibson will contribute...Read “PRESS RELEASE 8/5/2013 Rosemary Gibson Named Senior Advisor to The Hastings Center”
Bioethics Forum Essay
I Was Never “Just” a Visitor
Caregivers are not visitors. Hospital policies that restrict visits from family caregivers can harm patients.Bioethics Forum Essay
Chronicling the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Through Art
I was born in the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital in 1974 where the Tuskegee Syphilis Study took place. I have had a lifelong curiosity about the ethics of the study and...Hastings Center News
Hastings Scholar on Public Radio’s “Science Friday”: “Frankenstein” at 200
Frankenstein, published 200 years ago this month, asked what it means to be human. In the age of CRISPR and artificial intelligence, that question endures. On Public Radio International’s “Science...Read “Hastings Scholar on Public Radio’s “Science Friday”: “Frankenstein” at 200”
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Rights Come to Mind: Brain Injury, Ethics and the Struggle for Consciousness
Joseph J. Fins (Cambridge University Press, 2015) Hastings Center Fellow and Board member Joseph J. Fins, MD, tells the sobering story of one family’s struggle with severe brain injury and...Read “Rights Come to Mind: Brain Injury, Ethics and the Struggle for Consciousness”
Bioethics Forum Essay
A Right to Seek Payment for One’s Tissue
After much anticipation, on April 22, HBO debuted The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a film based on Rebecca Skloot’s bestselling book, starring Oprah Winfrey. Lacks’s cells provided the foundation...Page
Ethical Decision-making for Newborn Genetic Screening
Hastings Investigators: Thomas H. Murray and Mary Ann Baily Funder: National Human Genome Research Institute New screening technologies and new knowledge about the origin and treatment of genetic conditions pose challenges...Read “Ethical Decision-making for Newborn Genetic Screening”
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Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Bioethical Issues
Edited by Gregory E. Kaebnick (McGraw-Hill, 2020) This collection, designed for use in the classroom, includes current controversial issues in a debate-style format designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills....Page
Regulating Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis in the United States: The Limits of Unlimited Selection
Michelle Bayefsky and Bruce Jennings (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) During medically assisted reproduction, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) can be used to select some embryos for use and to discard others based...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Choice Bazaar
Some years ago I wrote a book on abortion that espoused women’s right to choose abortion and was later cited in Roe v. Wade. That should have made me popular with...Page
Shaping Our Selves: On Technology, Flourishing, and a Habit of Thinking
Erik Parens (Oxford University Press, 2014) When bioethicists debate the use of technologies like surgery and pharmacology to shape our selves, they are, ultimately, debating what it means for human...Read “Shaping Our Selves: On Technology, Flourishing, and a Habit of Thinking”
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Ethics and Newborn Genetic Screening
Edited by Mary Ann Baily and Thomas H. Murray (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) Highly Commended, Basis of Medicine, 2010 British Medical Association Book Awards The United States has the...Page
The Hastings Center Guidelines for Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment and Care Near the End of Life
By Nancy Berlinger, Bruce Jennings, Susan M. Wolf (Oxford University Press, 2013) This major new work updates and significantly expands The Hastings Center’s 1987 Guidelines on the Termination of Life-Sustaining...Page
Climate Bioethics Program
Principal Investigator: Cheryl MacPherson, Windward Islands Research and Education Foundation and St. George’s University, Grenada Investigators: Carolyn Neuhaus and Athmeya Jayaram (The Hastings Center), Paul Cummins (Clarkson University) Funder: Fogarty International Center and the...Page
PRESS RELEASE 3-1-2018: New in the Hastings Center Report: January-February 2018
Can Rationing through Inconvenience Be Ethical? Nir Eyal, Paul L. Romain, and Christopher Robertson “Rationing through inconvenience” refers to burdensome arrangements such as application forms, waiting periods, and other red...Read “PRESS RELEASE 3-1-2018: New in the Hastings Center Report: January-February 2018”
Bioethics Forum Essay
An Evergreen Metaphor: Strachan Donnelley, Dan Callahan, and Environmental Ethics
The devastation of Hurricane Ida and the global threats of climate change are not on the fringe of bioethics. They call to mind the language of priority-setting typical of bioethics discourse. Who lives and who dies? What can be accomplished with prevention and more levees? And if more are built, how do we set priorities with limited resources?Read “An Evergreen Metaphor: Strachan Donnelley, Dan Callahan, and Environmental Ethics”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Being at Two with Nature and Mosquitoes
When Woody Allen said he was “at two with nature,” perhaps he had in mind insects that sting or bite. Who can argue with that, and who hasn’t taken a...Bioethics Forum Essay
Theocracy Is Closer Than It Appears
On a cloudy April afternoon, in my home in western Pennsylvania, a headline catches my eye: A federal judge in Texas suspended FDA approval of mifepristone. This abortion-inducing drug has been on the market for more than 20 years. Although the decision is presented with a secular and legal façade, like other recent antiabortion court rulings and legislation, a solid religious motive is at play.In the Media
Hastings President Emeritus on Caster Semenya, Testosterone, and Fairness in Sports
A Washington Post article on the ethics of the recent ruling on testosterone levels in women's sports quotes Hastings Center President Emeritus Thomas Murray and cites his book: “Good Sport: Why Our Games Matter — And How Doping Undermines Them.” Says Murray about the case: “You’re balancing considerations that just don’t afford an easy solution.”"Read “Hastings President Emeritus on Caster Semenya, Testosterone, and Fairness in Sports”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Science in the Biden White House: Eric Lander, Alondra Nelson, and the Legacy of Lewis Thomas
Science has replaced populism in the White House. For the first time, the president's science advisor will be elevated to cabinet rank. There are other good omens, as well.Read “Science in the Biden White House: Eric Lander, Alondra Nelson, and the Legacy of Lewis Thomas”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Migrants’ Lives, Immigration Policy, and Ethics Work
The Russian poet Anna Akhmatova was a mother separated from her child by a state policy of terror. During the 1930s, she and other mothers would gather outside a Leningrad...Bioethics Forum Essay
Our System for Reporting Child Abuse is Unethical
The system of mandatory reporting of child abuse is rife with ethical problems and can lead to unjustified custody loss.Hastings Center News
Love and Loss with Amy Bloom
Bestselling author Amy Bloom‘s world was altered forever when an MRI indicated that her husband Brian had Alzheimer’s disease. Together, led by Brian, Brian and Amy made the decision to travel to Switzerland to access an assisted dying process...Bioethics Forum Essay
Dan Callahan’s Final Interview
Daniel Callahan's final interview was with an undergraduate eager to learn about bioethics. "I could tell that bioethics was far more than a job to him," she writes.Bioethics Forum Essay
The Medical Humanity of Oliver Sacks: In His Own Words
We science-medicine-poetry junkies, along with a sizeable portion of the world’s population, are mourning the death of Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and author who died last Sunday from metastasized melanoma. And as...Read “The Medical Humanity of Oliver Sacks: In His Own Words”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Let the Sun Shine into the Medical Ivory Tower
In 2012, I coauthored a case report about the successful use of dietary supplements in treating a case of male infertility in the American Family Physician. Before it was published,...From Bioethics Briefings
Pandemics: The Ethics of Mandatory and Voluntary Interventions
[This chapter is adapted from “Influenza Pandemic,” by Alexandra Minna Stern and Howard Markel, in From Birth to Death and Bench to Clinic: The Hastings Center Bioethics Briefing Book for...Read “Pandemics: The Ethics of Mandatory and Voluntary Interventions”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Synthetic Chromosomes
A team of scientists announced this week that it had successfully created one of the sixteen chromosomes found in yeast cells, marking a meaningful step forward in that part of...Bioethics Forum Essay
“End of Life,” Value Judgments, and Ending Lives
It may be more than just discrimination at work. As is to be expected, once people start reflecting on an essay as important and provocative as Bill Peace’s“Comfort Care as...Bioethics Forum Essay
Caster Semenya and the Challenges of Sports Brackets
If virtuous perfection of natural talents is what sports is all about, sports needs more people like Caster Semenya, the South African runner. But she is now ineligible for competing in middle distance events unless she takes medication to suppress her naturally high testosterone levels. Is this fair?Bioethics Forum Essay
How Bioethicists Can Help Reduce Global Health Inequities
The state of global health is a major concern. Despite advances in medicine and medical care and massive growth of the global economy, health in the world is characterized by...Read “How Bioethicists Can Help Reduce Global Health Inequities”
Hastings Center News
Daniel Callahan Pays Tribute to Two Hastings Center Fellows
Two distinguished bioethics scholars and Fellows of The Hastings Center died recently: H. Tristram Englehardt Jr. and Baruch Brody. They were among the early leaders of the new field of...Read “Daniel Callahan Pays Tribute to Two Hastings Center Fellows”
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Surgically Shaping Children: Technology, Ethics and the Pursuit of Normality
Edited by Erik Parens (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) At a time when medical technologies make it ever easier to enhance our minds and bodies, a debate has arisen about whether...Read “Surgically Shaping Children: Technology, Ethics and the Pursuit of Normality”
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Wrestling with Behavioral Genetics: Science, Ethics, and Public Conversation
Edited by Erik Parens, Audrey Chapman, and Nancy Press (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005) Hardly a month goes by without a media report proclaiming that researchers have discovered the gene for...Read “Wrestling with Behavioral Genetics: Science, Ethics, and Public Conversation”
Bioethics Forum Essay
A Narrow Path for Optimism that Social Genomics Can Combat Inequality
In his recent piece, “The genes we’re dealt,” Erik Parens puts his finger on cause for concern with what he calls social genomics: while progressives can use insights from this new field to justify combating inequality, conservatives can use them to justify the existence of that same inequality. This pessimistic conclusion—which Parens argues convincingly for—follows from a focus on insights at the societal level, that of a whole population. But there are grounds for optimism by focusing instead on potential insights from social genomics derived from local-level comparisons between different environments. Such insights could point to interventions that progressives and conservatives might just be able to agree on.Read “A Narrow Path for Optimism that Social Genomics Can Combat Inequality”
Hastings Center News
National Academies Workshop on Aid-in-Dying Features Hastings Scholars
Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger and cofounder and President Emeritus Daniel Callahan participated in a major public workshop on February 12 and 13. “Physician-Assisted Death: Scanning the Landscape and...Read “National Academies Workshop on Aid-in-Dying Features Hastings Scholars”
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PRESS RELEASE: 12.13.12 Over 65 Blog Focuses on Seniors Health and Security
(Garrison, NY) Against the backdrop of federal budget negotiations bearing on the future of Medicare and Social Security are ongoing concerns about an aging population: health, economic well-being, family needs,...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 12.13.12 Over 65 Blog Focuses on Seniors Health and Security”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Real Story Behind the Goldwater Rule
“The Presidency should not be used as a platform for proving one’s manhood . . .” “Inwardly he is a frightened person who sees himself as weak and threatened by...Page
Transcript | Re-Opening the Nation: What Values Should Guide Us?
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The Ethics of Hospital Trustees, Hastings Center Studies in Ethics Series
By Bruce Jennings, Virginia A. Sharpe, Bradford H. Gray, Alan R. Fleischman Georgetown University Press, June 2004 Purchase this book at amazon.com Deriving from a research project conducted by The...Read “The Ethics of Hospital Trustees, Hastings Center Studies in Ethics Series”
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The Role of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Accommodating Pluralism
Daniel Callahan (Georgetown University Press, 2004) Alternative and complementary medicine are widely embraced in American society, estimated to be used by 40% of the population. Moreover, the more educated people...Read “The Role of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Accommodating Pluralism”
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New in the Hastings Center Report
Social psychology and industry gifts to physicians, reimbursement for advance planning, quarantine controversy, and more in the May-June 2016 issue. Implicit Cognition and Gifts: How Does Social Psychology Help Us...Bioethics Forum Essay
Should We Stop Having Children?
Not long ago, I received a questionnaire from an organization on a crusade to lower birthrates to protect the health and well-being of people and the environment. Called the Population...Hastings Center News
Inside the Lake Nona Impact Forum: Q&A with Vardit Ravitsky
Two week ago, Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky spoke at the 12th annual Lake Nona Impact Forum, a three-day event that aspires to build “the Wellbeing Ecosystem of the Future,...Read “Inside the Lake Nona Impact Forum: Q&A with Vardit Ravitsky”
Bioethics Forum Essay
De-Extinction: Could Technology Save Nature?
This past November, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature declared the western black rhinoceros of Africa, last seen in 2006, officially extinct. It also concluded that most other...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 07-11-2019 Hastings Center Report, May-June 2019
Read “PRESS RELEASE: 07-11-2019 Hastings Center Report, May-June 2019”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Walk it Off, Crybaby
On a recent installment of This American Life, Ira Glass asks this pressing question. Why are rich and powerful people so often the world’s biggest crybabies? Exhibit A: the whining...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Minimalist as Maximalist: Food Ethics and Workers’ Rights
Mark Bittman, the New York Times food writer who created the no-fail “minimalist” recipes affixed to many a locavore refrigerator door, is an ethical maximalist. In his 1994 book, Thick and Thin:Moral Argument...Read “The Minimalist as Maximalist: Food Ethics and Workers’ Rights”
Bioethics Forum Essay
EpiPen Furor: Patient Groups Take Money, Stay Mum
The furor around the price of an EpiPen has exposed the contradictions of patient advocacy groups with funding from the pharmaceutical industry. EpiPens contain epinephrine, an oldie-but-goodie, inexpensive generic drug...Bioethics Forum Essay
Chemical Weapons Convention Reaches Milestone
Many post-World War II international structures are what might be called bioethics adjacent: They are not strictly part of the set of widely recognized global bioethics standards and instruments, like the Declaration of Helsinki, but they overlap with concerns routinely expressed in bioethics. One of these is the Chemical Weapons Convention, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year with the destruction by all States Parties of their declared stockpiles of chemical weapons and dual-use chemicals.Page
Transcript: Critical Moment in Bioethics
This transcript automatically generated by machine and may contain errors Dani Pacia (she/her): hi everyone on behalf of the Hastings Center welcome to a critical moment in bioethics a webinar...Page
Ethics and Research in Resource-Poor Countries
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Research in Resource-Poor Countries As health problems and disease threats cross borders on a global scale, wealthy countries are increasingly funding and...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Balloon, the Bicycle, and Al Jonsen
Albert R. Jonsen, a pioneer of medicine and a founder of the field of medical ethics, died peacefully in his home on October 21 at 89. We first met in 1973, when I was a medical student and I was interested in medical ethics. He gave me the best career advice I have ever received. “Don’t do it,” he said. “Finish your medical training first. If you don’t have the same credentials as the doctors, and share their world, they won’t listen.”Bioethics Forum Essay
A Call for Medical Students to Learn the Full Story about the “Father of Gynecology”
Along with the recent public debates over Confederate memorials, there have been calls to remove or modify the statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims, called the father of gynecology in...Read “A Call for Medical Students to Learn the Full Story about the “Father of Gynecology””
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PRESS RELEASE: 11.19.12 Two New Books by Daniel Callahan: A Memoir and a Collected Writing on “Roots of Bioethics”
(Garrison, NY) Daniel Callahan, who established the field of bioethics with the co-founding of The Hastings Center in 1969, has two new books: a memoir, In Search of the Good:...Bioethics Forum Essay
Sacred versus Synthetic? Nature Preservationism and Biotechnology
One of the long-term contributions of Earth Day is that it offers a regular, semi-official reminder that a sense of the sacred is a vital part of environmentalism. The spirit...Read “Sacred versus Synthetic? Nature Preservationism and Biotechnology”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Where is Clinical Ethics in the Revised Hospital Accreditation Standards?
The Joint Commission, which accredits our nation's hospitals, eliminated the sole element of performance that governed clinical ethics services. This decision impedes equity and undercuts progress toward fostering ethical practice in health care.Read “Where is Clinical Ethics in the Revised Hospital Accreditation Standards?”
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Ethics, Genetics, and the Future of Sport: The Implications of Genetic Modification and Genetic Selection
Project launched in June 2005 Principal Investigator: Thomas H. Murray Funder: United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) Purpose The project had four basic aims: Develop a realistic assessment of the likely time horizon...Page
Ethics & Human Research
Ethics & Human Research (formerly IRB: Ethics & Human Research) aims to foster critical analysis of issues in science and health care that have implications for human biomedical and behavioral...Page
Navigating: On Disability, Technology, and Experiencing the World
Part 2 of our online event series, “The Art of Flourishing: Conversations on Disability” How are people with disabilities (disabled people) using—or choosing not to use—technologies to promote individual flourishing?...Read “Navigating: On Disability, Technology, and Experiencing the World”
Hastings Center News
New Hastings Center Fellows Elected
The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 11 new Fellows. Hastings Center Fellows are a group of individuals of outstanding accomplishment, whose work has informed scholarship and/or...Page
Medicine and the Market
Principal Investigators: Daniel Callahan and Angela Wasunna Funders: The Rockefeller Foundation and the Pettus-Crowe Foundation Is the institution of medicine compatible with market values? Driven by that fundamental question, this project examined,...From Bioethics Briefings
Clinical Trials
Framing the Issue Clinical research with human participants utilizes a systematic approach to help understand human health and illness in order to find safe and effective ways to prevent, diagnose,...From Bioethics Briefings
Neonatal Care
Framing the Issue Approximately 380,000 babies, or 9.6%, are born prematurely (before 37 weeks gestation) in the United States each year. This is a significant reduction since 2007, when the...Bioethics Forum Essay
Can Social Media Increase Transplant Donation and Save Lives?
While at the National Institutes of Health in 1967 and 1968, we were involved in the design and drafting of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, in partnership with the Commissioners...Read “Can Social Media Increase Transplant Donation and Save Lives?”
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Ethical Issues in the Management of Financial Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research
Hastings Investigators: Thomas H. Murray, Daniel Callahan, Mary Ann Baily, Angela Wasunna, and Josephine Johnston. Funder: The Donaghue Foundation This Center project examined concerns that arise in managing financial conflicts of interest in biomedical...Read “Ethical Issues in the Management of Financial Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research”
Expert Contributor
Alfred M. Sadler
Alfred Sadler, a physician, has been a leader of the development of the profession of physician assistants and is completing a book on the subject. They were founding Fellows of...Bioethics Forum Essay
Pink Boys with Puppy Dog Tails
In my e-mail in-box a few weeks ago, I received a polite message from a woman named Sarah Hoffman who was writing to ask why I was being such a...Bioethics Forum Essay
Dusting Off Double Effect for the Post-Dobbs Era
What constitutes a medical emergency for a pregnant patient? ER clinicians in states with abortion bans need to know.Bioethics Forum Essay
The Elephant from Heaven and the Chicken from Hell–or: Colossal Fantasies
I have always wanted to see a woolly mammoth. From the time I first read about them up until, well, a few moments ago, I’ve fantasized about going back in time to see a herd shoving its way through an Ice Age snowstorm. Alas, it cannot be, even if George Church and a new company, Colossus, bend heaven and earth to make it happen.Read “The Elephant from Heaven and the Chicken from Hell–or: Colossal Fantasies”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Something Is Actually Happening: Are Bioethicists Doing the Right Stuff?
There’s a scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian that always reminds me of academia. It goes like this: The year is 32 A.D. and Brian, an unwitting doppelganger of...Read “Something Is Actually Happening: Are Bioethicists Doing the Right Stuff?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Value of Bioethics Against Authoritarian Populism
Populism has been influencing public discourse and election outcomes in several countries recently. The degree to which populism has a sway on elections varies with the electoral system in each...Read “The Value of Bioethics Against Authoritarian Populism”
Hastings Center News
A Tribute to Albert Jonsen
The Hastings Center is saddened by the death of Albert Jonsen, a leader in the field of bioethics, on October 21 at the age of 89. He was a Hastings...Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 07.26.12 Bioethicist Tom Murray available to discuss doping, fairness, and other ethical issues in sport as Olympics approach
(Garrison, NY) With the Olympics beginning on July 27, attention is focused on the world’s top athletes, as well as ethical issues surrounding the use of performance-enhancing drugs and other...Page
Health Care in World Cities: New York, London, and Paris
Michael K. Gusmano, Victor G. Rodwin, and Daniel Weisz (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) Although New York, London, and Paris have similar sociodemographic characteristics, including income inequalities and ethnic...Read “Health Care in World Cities: New York, London, and Paris”
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Genetic Ties and the Future of the Family
Project launched in July 2001 Lead Investigators:Mark Rothstein (of the Health Law and Policy Institute at the University of Louisville), Mary Anderlik Majumder (now of Baylor College of Medicine), Thomas H....Bioethics Forum Essay
New Hope for Detecting Consciousness in Vegetative Patients: Ethical Implications
Patients diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state have figured prominently in the law and medical ethics relating to end-of-life decisions since the case of Karen Quinlan in 1976....Read “New Hope for Detecting Consciousness in Vegetative Patients: Ethical Implications”
Bioethics Forum Essay
EpiPens and the Sale of Fear
On September 21, Heather Bresch, CEO of Mylan, took heat at a Congressional hearing about high EpiPen prices. EpiPens are definitely overpriced – but they are also overprescribed. An EpiPen is...Hastings Center News
TRANSCRIPT – Breakthrough or Breakdown: Should the FDA Have Approved the New Alzheimer’s Drug?
[Transcript created by voice recognition] Danielle Pacia, The Hastings Center Hello and welcome to Breakthrough or Breakdown. Should the FDA have approved the new Alzheimer’s drug, a Hastings Center conversation?...Bioethics Forum Essay
“The Handmaid’s Tale” and Modern-Day Surrogacy
With the wild popularity of the new TV series The Handmaid’s Tale, surrogacy is back in the limelight. The Hulu show, based on the cautionary novel of the same name by...Bioethics Forum Essay
To Restore Humanity in Health Care, Address Clinician Burnout
Health care in America is at a critical juncture. The number of people who need it continues to grow and costs have skyrocketed. But instead of being a beacon of healing, many health care organizations are beleaguered and overwhelmed. Burnout has become a rallying cry for nurses and doctors because it impedes their ability to uphold the foundational values of their professions and to serve in accordance with them. These realities have eroded the fundamental humanity of health care.Read “To Restore Humanity in Health Care, Address Clinician Burnout”
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Resources: Art of Flourishing Public Events Series
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Ethics & Human Research Press Kit
Latest Issue Access content from the latest issue here. Editors Karen J. Maschke, Editor maschkek@thehastingscenter.org Julie Chibbaro, Managing Editor hauptl@thehastingscenter.org Nora Porter, Art Director, Assistant Editor portern@thehastingscenter.org About the Journal Ethics...Hastings Center News
Tribute to Eric Cassell
Eric Cassell, a pioneer in patient-centered care and a Hastings founding fellow and former board member, wrote prolifically on medicine’s moral issues and care of the dying.Our Team
Liz Bowen
Liz Bowen is an assistant professor of bioethics and humanities at Upstate Medical University and a Hastings Center presidential scholar. An English literature and disability studies scholar, she was the...From Bioethics Briefings
Disaster Planning and Public Health
Framing the Issue Disasters happen. Coping with them and recovering and rebuilding afterward are nothing new. Systematic, evidence-based advance planning and preparedness are more novel, however, and seeing disasters as...Page
Gene Editing and Human Flourishing
Principal Investigators: Erik Parens and Josephine Johnston Co-Investigators: Gregory Kaebnick and Mildred Z. Solomon Funder: John Templeton Foundation This international project focuses on the potential social and ethical implications of using...Page
PRESS RELEASE 5-23-2019: New in Ethics & Human Research, May-June 2019
Burden or Opportunity? Parent Experiences When Approached for Research in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Erin Paquette, Avani Shukla, Jacob Davidson, Karen Rychlik, and Matthew Davis There’s an ongoing...Read “PRESS RELEASE 5-23-2019: New in Ethics & Human Research, May-June 2019”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethics and Evidence in the Search for a Vaccine and Treatments for Covid-19
In the rush to find a Covid-19 vaccine and one or more drugs to treat the deadly disease, concerns are being raised that ethical standards for conducting human clinical trials and the evidentiary standards for determining whether interventions are safe and effective, might be loosened.Read “Ethics and Evidence in the Search for a Vaccine and Treatments for Covid-19”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Trial of “Death by Medicine”: An Interview with Lisa Krieger
On February 5, Lisa Krieger, a science and medicine writer for the Mercury News in San Jose, Ca, published a remarkably moving and insightful article about the protracted dying of her 88-year-old father. Suffering...Read “The Trial of “Death by Medicine”: An Interview with Lisa Krieger”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Reframing Conscientious Care: Q&A with Mara Buchbinder
Much of the conversation about conscience in health care has focused on the ethics of physician refusal to perform procedures that they object to. However, this framework seems insufficient for...Read “Reframing Conscientious Care: Q&A with Mara Buchbinder”
Hastings Center News
Announcing Ethics & Human Research
The Hastings Center is announcing an exciting new direction for its journal on research ethics. Beginning with the January-February 2019 issue, the Center will launch Ethics & Human Research (E&HR),...Bioethics Forum Essay
Black Bioethics and How the Failures of the Profession Paved the Way for Its Existence
In many ways, black bioethics can be explained very simply as the exploration and interrogation of any event, ideal, technological advancement, person, or institution that directly or indirectly affects the health or well-being of black (loosely defined) individuals or the black population. Black bioethics is taking what we do in bioethics and specifically applying it to black people. But in other ways black bioethics is more than this; it is a rebellion against bioethics.Read “Black Bioethics and How the Failures of the Profession Paved the Way for Its Existence”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Bioethics in the Margins
Bioethics in the Margins is a new podcast that addresses fundamental moral issues facing society that don’t get the attention they deserve.Page
PRESS RELEASE 10-01-2018: Announcing Ethics & Human Research
The Hastings Center is announcing an exciting new direction for its journal on research ethics. Beginning with the January-February 2019 issue, the Center will launch Ethics & Human Research (E&HR), a...Read “PRESS RELEASE 10-01-2018: Announcing Ethics & Human Research”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Why We Need a Covid-19 Commission
Congress recently announced plans for an independent commission to investigate the facts and causes of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. This 1/6 Commission is to be modelled after the 9/11 Commission. A national commission to investigate the disaster that the Covid-19 virus has caused in America must also be launched.Page
Trust and Integrity in Biomedical Research: The Case of Financial Conflicts of Interest
Edited by Thomas H. Murray and Josephine Johnston (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) Highly Commended in the Basis of Medicine, 2011 BMA Medical Book Awards. British Medical Association News of...Read “Trust and Integrity in Biomedical Research: The Case of Financial Conflicts of Interest”
Hastings Center News
The Hastings Center Celebrates Outstanding Journalists
Three journalists received The Hastings Center Awards for Excellence in Journalism on Ethics and Reprogenetics. The awards were presented at an event in New York City on December 6 that...Read “The Hastings Center Celebrates Outstanding Journalists”
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Aging Policy and Politics in the Trump Era
Edited by Edward Alan Miller, Pamela Nadash, and Michael K. Gusmano (Routledge, 2018) This comprehensive volume explores the ways in which Trump administration policies are likely to significantly undermine the...Hastings Center News
Event: Why Doping Matters in Sports
What do we really care about in sport, and how does the reckless use of biomedical enhancements undermine those values? Come to Why Doping Matters in Sports, a lecture by Hastings...Bioethics Forum Essay
Religion, Suffering, and the Physician’s Role
Should religion play a role in a doctor's care of seriously ill patients? The author, a hematologist/oncologist who teaches Jewish medical ethics, writes: "A physician's outlook may be shaped by religious standards without having to impose it on the patient."From Bioethics Briefings
Abortion
A central philosophical question in the abortion debate concerns the moral status of the embryo and fetus. If the fetus is a person, with the same right to life as any human being who has been born, it would seem that very few, if any, abortions could be justified, because it is not morally permissible to kill children because they are unwanted or illegitimate or disabled. However, the morality of abortion is not settled so straightforwardly. Even if one accepts the argument that the fetus is a person, it does not automatically follow that it has a right to the use of the pregnant woman’s body. Thus, the morality of abortion depends not only on the moral status of the fetus, but also on whether the pregnant woman has an obligation to continue to gestate the fetus.From Bioethics Briefings
Climate Change
Framing the Issue No issue demands greater care in balancing benefits and risks than responding to the threat of global climate change. Data indicate that global surface temperatures have risen...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Cutting into the Spongy Belly of Surgical Innovation
Surgeons are generally free to make changes in operative procedures—from minor to major—without any need for approval from the Food and Drug Administration. This raises a host of fascinating issues...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Clear Recommendations to Reform Pediatric Research
In Children in Medical Research: Access Versus Protection, Lainie Friedman Ross presents a number of recommendations to increase protections for the vulnerable pediatric population—even if achieving this goal comes at the...From Bioethics Briefings
Aging
Framing the Issue The aging of modern societies–a striking fruit of medical advances and improved economic and living standards–is one of the most important global challenges, affecting rich and poor...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Research Ethics Consultation at the NIH Clinical Center
Key words/concepts: Human subjects research, human research ethics, research regulation and oversight, regulations and guidelines for human subjects research, research review boards and committees, institutional review board (IRB), research ethics...Read “Research Ethics Consultation at the NIH Clinical Center”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Struggling with the Dilemma of Exploitation in the Developing World
Researchers appear to take unfair advantage of those who live in the developing world by using placebo-controlled trials to test the efficacy of drugs. This type of trial would not...Read “Struggling with the Dilemma of Exploitation in the Developing World”