After several decades of being a prolific bioethicist, I am no longer sure I can afford to pay the open-access fees to publish in the field.

In its early days, bioethics emphasized patient autonomy in the doctor-patient relationship. But patient autonomy is not the be-all and end-all principle to follow in all health care settings. Especially in lethal, airborne infectious disease pandemics.

James F. Drane, a member of the founding generation of bioethicists, passed away on April 17 in Edinboro, Pennsylvania at the age of 93. He was a prolific writer, internationally recognized scholar, and trusted friend.

How accurately could AI translate complex medical information for lay persons? How well could it identify and distill the ethical dilemmas posed by research findings? What safeguards could be used to prevent the use of AI for misinformation and disinformation? We performed a small nonscientific experiment.

To eliminate a quality metric for clinical ethics is at odds with good clinical practice and it reinforces structural inequality.

All manner of officials in high places in the United States have been coming under scrutiny lately as to their fitness for office. Donald Trump Jr. piled on to right-wing attacks on...

What constitutes a medical emergency for a pregnant patient? ER clinicians in states with abortion bans need to know.

The Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade has played a subtle but critical role in the history of bioethics in America. Would American bioethics discourse be changed with the end of a constitutionally protected right to abortion?

Bioethics is an integral part of the liberal international order intentionally developed after World War II. Following the Russian war on Ukraine there is every reason to believe that the set of norms and institutions that preserved peace in Europe through the first Cold War will be revised according to new assumptions that will structure international relations in a second Cold War.

Bioethics in the Margins is a new podcast that addresses fundamental moral issues facing society that don’t get the attention they deserve.

The field of bioethics has a moral responsibility to respond to the continued racial and health inequities confronting Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. Along with several colleagues, we formed an antiracism task force to interrogate that moral responsibility. Here are key takeaways from a recent panel discussion that we organized.

A remarkable experiment raises anew questions about whether brain-death is really death.

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.

The procurement of human plasma as a potential therapy for Covid-19 is one of the latest examples of bioethics nationalism, defined by Jonathan Moreno in this blog as “distinct bioethics standards [which] are formally proclaimed as a matter of right by a sovereign state.” The race for a Covid cure pushes at the weak seams in the international liberal order in much the same way that Covid appears to be pushing at health care systems.

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.”

Covid isn’t merely overshadowing the drug overdose crisis—it’s directly worsening it.

The global crisis created by the coronavirus pandemic and the rush to create and distribute a vaccine widely hoped to be a “silver bullet” that can facilitate a return to “normalcy” threatens to upend seven decades of assumptions about bioethical norms.

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.

With some reluctance, I’ve come to the sad realization the COVID-19 pandemic has been a stress test for bioethics, a field of study that intersects medicine, law, the humanities and the social sciences. As both a physician and medical ethicist, I arrived at this conclusion after spending months at what was once the epicenter of the pandemic: New York City. I was overseeing a 24/7 bioethics consultation service.

In his recent JAMA article, Donald Berwick eloquently describes what he termed the “moral determinants of health,” by which he meant a strong sense of social solidarity in which people in the United States would “depend on each other for securing the basic circumstances of healthy lives,” reflecting a “moral law within.” Berwick’s work should serve as a call to action for bioethicists and clinical ethicists to consider what they can do to be forces of broad moral change in their institutions.

We have reached a very sad, painful moment in the United States. It feels like a cascade of calamities, one compounding the next. An infectious disease pandemic that we cannot yet cure has precipitated an economic crisis. An episode of police brutality against a black man has added the name George Floyd to a long list of victims of unfair policing practices in black communities. Bioethicists have not been doing enough in our professional capacities to actively denounce or address the persistent problems of structural racism. We invite our fellow bioethics colleagues to join us in candid, uncomfortable conversations about what we can and should be doing differently.

George Floyd could not breathe while his neck was trapped under the knee of a police officer for nearly nine minutes. Yet despite the impressive scholarship of bioethics on ventilation and other technologies that prolong human breathing capabilities, it is largely silent on the suffocating effects of racism. Bioethics must speak out against racial injustice.

It takes less time than ever to publish papers. But is quality sacrificed by doing bioethics at warp speed, especially during the Covid pandemic?

Covid-19 is making bioethics more relevant than ever. The ethical dilemmas raised by the pandemic are urgent and heart-wrenching. Who should get a ventilator if we do not have enough? How can we protect the most vulnerable from discrimination in the face of difficult triage decisions? How do we weigh individual liberty against the public interest of keeping people confined? While such questions are not new for bioethicists, the need to answer them urgently, globally, and in very concrete settings, creates unprecedented circumstances. Is this an opportunity for bioethics to learn some important lessons? What should post-Covid bioethics look like?

Dilemmas that clinicians face in the coronavirus pandemic–who gets the ventilator, the 80-year-old grandmother or the 20-year-old student?–are the bread and butter of mainstream bioethics. In medical school, my classmates and I memorized the four principles (beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, and autonomy), which we were told would help us make hard clinical decisions in ethically ambiguous terrain. But Covid-19 shows that medical ethics means much more than what generally falls under bioethics. Medical ethics is deeply political, and to act ethically in medicine means engaging the larger context in which it operates.

It’s been painful to watch health leaders twist themselves into moral knots denying that recently created ventilator rationing guidance will differentially affect Blacks, Latinx, and other people of color. On television, in newspapers, and on listservs, when the predicted disproportionate impacts of these policies are raised, some bioethicists-often white, stonewall. Or repeat a policy’s assertions that race, ethnicity, disability, etc. are irrelevant to care decisions. Or default to the intent of the policymakers.

When the rapper T. I. disclosed on a podcast that he takes his 18-year-old daughter to a yearly gynecological examination to ensure that her hymen is still intact, the reaction of most people was condemnation. His obsession with her virginity is creepy, his subjecting her to an invasive procedure that has no medical value is controlling, and his willingness to talk about it publicly displays contempt for her rights to privacy and dignity. Some think that the law should prohibit physicians from performing or supervising virginity examinations. But the law is not the best means for dealing with the problem, and the problem is not simply virginity testing.

Professionals and the public in China first learned of the jail sentence of He Jiankui from the report of Xinhua News Agency. No information, including any interpretation, was provided by the Court. But the reported words of the sentence are so ambiguous as to leave room for different interpretations. We believe that the public has the right to know more than Xinhua News Agency reported.

Are we ethically obliged to eat less meat? Bioethicists consider that question, and their role in addressing it.

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.

I have been leading a weekly ethics class for middle- and early-high school-aged youth. My preconceived assumptions about the abilities of adolescents to discuss bioethics issues have been dispelled by the depth and nuance of their insights.

What does it mean to live well on a warming planet? And as the climate changes, how might health care, education, and other sectors support, or obstruct, our ability to respond? The answers to these profound, and profoundly bioethical, questions will critically influence human well-being in this century and beyond. A group of scientists, educators, and bioethicists convened at The Hastings Center recently to consider these questions and begin an interdisciplinary conversation on how bioethics might address the challenges posed by climate change.

As the opioid crisis reaches a fever pitch, public perception often lumps chronic pain patients and opioid abusers under the stigma-tainted umbrella of drug user. But the full picture of human interaction with pain, pain management, and addiction is far from black and white. In its most recent narrative symposium, Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics published personal stories from those living with chronic pain or opioid abuse disorder. Both groups comment on their need for medical treatment and ethical care.

The protections of GINA play a key role in the decision of many of my healthy patients to decide to undergo genetic testing. My criticism is that GINA is unfair to people who might suffer discrimination in health. insurance for non-genetic reasons.

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...

A preliminary investigation by Guangdong Province in China of He Jiankui, the scientist who created the world’s first gene-edited babies, found that “He had intentionally dodged supervision, raised funds and...

The introduction of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) as a means of preventing HIV infections in those at high risk marked a significant step in the fight against the virus. PrEP involves...

In their single-minded venture of “producing” (shengchan, in their own word) the world’s first gene-edited babies, He Jiankui and his associates have posed numerous and daunting ethical challenges to China...

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...

When the world’s first research on editing the genes of human embryos by Chinese scientists  was published in an international journal in 2015, a report in the New York Times...

In response to news of the world’s first babies born in China from gene-edited embryos, Sam Sternberg, a CRISPR/Cas9 researcher at Columbia University, spoke for many when he said “I’ve...

What do many transgender persons, farmworkers, homeless persons, people with disabilities, and many other persons in the United States have in common? One answer: they/we live and work in spaces...

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...

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...

Twice upon a time, there was a girl who died. The death certificate that New Jersey issued to 17-year-old Jahi McMath on June 22 was the second one issued for...

It’s a little-known and rarely discussed fact of medical practice that doctors value the ability to love our patients. If the thought of doctors loving patients makes you queasy, be...

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...

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...

Little noticed in the United States but a big deal in France, President Emmanuel Macron announced in January that he is creating a bioethics commission to review the country’s policies...

Not since Rene Descartes gazed from his garret window in early 17th-century Paris and wondered whether those were men or hats and coats covering “automatic machines” he saw roaming the...

My  colleague Susan Reverby surely got this right: It is time to consider anew what to do about Dr. J. Marion Sims, that is, what to do about the New...

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...

In a recent  article in the Hastings Center Report two leading bioethicists, Mildred Solomon and Bruce Jennings, called on fellow bioethicists to “come to the aid of civil liberties and...

In their paper “Bioethics and Populism: How Should Our Field Respond?” Mildred Solomon and Bruce Jennings have sparked an important debate about the role of bioethics in our current political...

Franklin Miller’s recent post in Bioethics Forum responded to our essay, “Bioethics and Populism: How Should Our Field Respond?”  in the current issue of the Hastings Center Report. There, we suggested...

In the wake of the Trump administration and populist movements abroad, Mildred Solomon and Bruce Jennings published a provocative essay, “Bioethics and Populism: How Should our Field Respond?” in the...

The smoke and the Sturm und Drang haven’t cleared from the greatest upset since Harry Truman defeated Tom Dewey in 1948 but it’s still possible to read some tea leaves...

Academic bioethics has never been popular with Republicans. Libertarians dislike academic bioethics because it seems too elitist and anti-free market.  Religious thinkers worry it is technocratic, soulless and crassly utilitarian....

In an 11-hour emergency session on March 23, the North Carolina General Assembly passed the first statewide “bathroom bill” in the nation. The law, known as HB 2, or the...

The question is as old as the field of bioethics: why does ethics too often not see problems coming and is then forced to play catch-up? Note that I use...

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...

It’s hard to say what is most horrifying in Carl Elliott’s report in the current issue of Mother Jones of a young man who died caught up in a pharma...

Our Bioethics Forum essay from a little over a month ago has already spawned three further essays. So we’ve asked the editors to indulge us in this single reply and update....

There’s a common misperception that, now that the Johns Hopkins psychologist John Money is gone, so are all the ethical problems with the way people with genital anomalies are treated....

Using the power of one’s wallet to effect social change: that’s got to be one of the best-loved steps in the beautiful dance we call American democracy. And so leaders...

An article in this week’s New York Times revealed new evidence of a disturbingly high risk of dementia among National Football League players. Conducted at the University of Michigan and...

President Obama’s announcement that he will replace the members of the President’s Council on Bioethics has led to speculation about appointments and the issues a reconstituted commission might address. White...

Ah, Beijing, where men are men and women are… women until proven otherwise. As reported in the New York Times, “Organizers of the Beijing Olympics have set up a sex-determination...

Why did portraying a married, working, loving, family-oriented, and religious couple with a disabled child bring out consistently negative reactions among the public toward allowing this family access to government-subsidized...

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...

For years, the abortion of fetuses likely to have disabilities has been called “selective abortion,” but, for reasons made clear in Hilde Lindemann’s thoughtful Bioethics Forumreflection on the matter, the...

Ever since HIPAA went into effect and I’ve been signing that form over and over at my doctors’ offices, attesting to my knowledge of the law, I’ve been feeling I...

Gay marriage is morally unacceptable – here’s why: Supporters of gay marriage undermine the rights of homosexuals because they provoke increased homophobic reactions and political mobilization in an already homophobic...

In a just-published New York Magazine piece, “The Science of Gaydar,” writer David France looks at the growing scientific evidence for innate differences between gay and straight people. France ends...

Deborah Costandine and I met in June of 2004, but she didn’t send me the autopsy report of her baby for another year and a half. So I didn’t start...

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...