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The Hastings Center for Bioethics — Health, Science, and Technology Ethics
Read “The Hastings Center for Bioethics — Health, Science, and Technology Ethics”
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.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
Why Is Ethics Too Often Playing Catch Up?
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...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
Products of Conception
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Liberty and Solidarity: May We Choose Children for Sexual Orientation?
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...Read “Liberty and Solidarity: May We Choose Children for Sexual Orientation?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Liberty Should Win: We May Choose Our Children’s Sexual Orientation
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...Read “Liberty Should Win: We May Choose Our Children’s Sexual Orientation”
Bioethics Forum Essay
When HIPAA Hurts
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Selective Parenting
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...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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Olympic Problems with Sex Testing
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Bathroom Bills, Bigotry, and Bioethics
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Does the NFL Need PETA?
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Attention Shoppers: LBGTQ Rights Apparently Not Worth $6.67 to the American Psychological Association
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Fetal Cosmetology
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....Bioethics Forum Essay
Prenatal Dex: Update and Omnibus Reply
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....Bioethics Forum Essay
Legal but Unethical: Who Works on That?
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...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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Belief in a Just World: A Case Study in Public Health Ethics
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...Read “Belief in a Just World: A Case Study in Public Health Ethics”
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Bioethics Briefings
Hastings Bioethics Briefings contains overviews of issues in bioethics of high public interest, such as abortion, brain injury, organ transplantation, medical aid-in-dying, racism, and stem cell research. The chapters, written by leading ethicists,...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...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...Bioethics Forum Essay
After the Election Bioethics Faces a Rocky Road
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....Bioethics Forum Essay
A Trump Bioethics Commission?
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...Hastings Center News
In the New Year, Learn About Our Visiting Scholars Program
The Hastings Center welcomes applications to its visiting scholars program, open to students, scholars, and professionals working on independent bioethics research. We offer self-catering accommodations for stays of one week...Read “In the New Year, Learn About Our Visiting Scholars Program”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Should Bioethics Respond to Authoritarian Populism?
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Continuing the Dialogue on Bioethics and Populism
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Symbolic Value of the Bioethics and Populism Debate
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...Read “The Symbolic Value of the Bioethics and Populism Debate”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Bioethics’ Best Response to Populist Polemics: Sticking to Its Roots
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...Read “Bioethics’ Best Response to Populist Polemics: Sticking to Its Roots”
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
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
Natalie Kofler: What Role Should Humans Play in “Editing Nature”?
Natalie Kofler, a postdoctoral research scientist at Yale University, visited The Hastings Center earlier this summer to explore the ethical questions surrounding the use of gene editing technologies in the...Read “Natalie Kofler: What Role Should Humans Play in “Editing Nature”?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
On Sims’s Legacy: Work for Bioethics
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...Hastings Center News
International Conference Co-Organized by Hastings Examines the Ethics of Gene Editing
Following recent advances in gene editing technologies, including the first recorded use of CRISPR/Cas9 in human embryos in the United States, The Hastings Center cosponsored an international conference, “Genome Editing:...Read “International Conference Co-Organized by Hastings Examines the Ethics of Gene Editing”
Hastings Center News
The “‘Ripple Effect” of Suicide: Hastings Center Cofounder Argues Against Physician Aid in Dying
Is it appropriate for physicians to help patients end their lives? In the current issue of Southern Medical Journal, Hastings Center cofounder Daniel Callahan and Lydia S. Dugdale, an associate...Hastings Center News
Two Leading Bioethicists Named 2017 Beecher Award Recipients
Albert Jonsen and Edward Frank Shotter have been named the recipients of The Hastings Center’s 2017 Henry Knowles Beecher Award for lifetime achievement in bioethics. Albert Jonsen, PhD, is emeritus...Read “Two Leading Bioethicists Named 2017 Beecher Award Recipients”
Hastings Center News
Cofounder Daniel Callahan Organizes Global Health Meeting
Daniel Callahan, cofounder and president emeritus of The Hastings Center, organized a daylong meeting to explore urgent issues in global health and discuss ways that bioethics can help address them....Read “Cofounder Daniel Callahan Organizes Global Health Meeting”
Hastings Center News
Four Ethical Priorities for Neurotechnologies and AI
Artificial intelligence and brain-computer interfaces could revolutionize the treatment of paralysis, schizophrenia, and more. But these neurotechnologies must respect and preserve people’s privacy, identity, agency, and equality, states an article...Hastings Center News
The Hastings Center Plans Genetics Workshop for Science Teachers
How can secondary school science teachers help their students think critically about the social and ethical implications of recent advances in gene editing? The Hastings Center is inviting these teachers...Read “The Hastings Center Plans Genetics Workshop for Science Teachers”
Hastings Center News
Deadline Extended: Help Us Recognize Physicians for Outstanding End-of-Life Care
Nominations have been extended to January 22, 2018 for The Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician Awards, which recognize physicians in the United States who give exemplary care to patients nearing the...Read “Deadline Extended: Help Us Recognize Physicians for Outstanding End-of-Life Care”
Bioethics Forum Essay
A New Mind-Body Problem
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...Hastings Center News
New “Hastings Conversations” Podcast: What’s Actually Wrong with Sport 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 welcome technologies that do...Read “New “Hastings Conversations” Podcast: What’s Actually Wrong with Sport Doping?”
Hastings Center News
Should We Pursue Genetic Cognitive Enhancement?
That was one of the many questions explored at a public event at the New York Academy of Sciences on May 21, cosponsored by The Hastings Center, the Aspen Brain...Hastings Center News
Defining Death: Public Event Explores the Legacy of Brain Death and the Future of Organ Transplantation
Defining Death: Organ Transplantation and the 50-Year Legacy of the Harvard Report on Brain Death, the 2018 Harvard Medical School’s Annual Bioethics Conference, took place from April 11 to 13...Hastings Center News
Hastings Scholar and Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist on Conscientious Objection
When is it acceptable for health care professionals to refuse to provide a treatment because it violates their conscience? The implications of recent developments in federal and state governments that...Read “Hastings Scholar and Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist on Conscientious Objection”
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...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center President Calls for “Moral Leadership” to Improve End-of-Life Care
Are you, as caregivers in a twenty-first century health system, helping your patients and families to make fully informed decisions about the treatments they want and that are likely to...Read “Hastings Center President Calls for “Moral Leadership” to Improve End-of-Life Care”
Hastings Center News
What Makes a Good Life Late in Life? Nobel Prize Winner and Leading Bioethicist Offer Insights
Eric Kandel, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine who has done groundbreaking work on the molecular mechanisms of memory, spoke at The Hastings Center on May...Hastings Center News
New Hastings Center Project: Public Deliberation for a Democracy in Crisis
Technologies are transforming the planet and its inhabitants, human and nonhuman, calling out for assessment and wise decision-making. Yet trust in science is eroding and polarization deeply threatens our ability...Read “New Hastings Center Project: Public Deliberation for a Democracy in Crisis”
Hastings Center News
World Science Festival Features Hastings Scholars on Gene Editing
Where do we draw the line between safe and dangerous applications of CRISPR, the gene editing technology that allows us to make permanent, even heritable, changes to the genetic code?...Read “World Science Festival Features Hastings Scholars on Gene Editing”
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”
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”
Hastings Center News
Hastings President Calls Attention to Public Engagement in Setting Science Policy
Genomics, new forms of assisted reproduction, neuroscience—these and other technologies give us transformative powers that we are just starting to realize. Nearly every report or commission that seeks to inform...Read “Hastings President Calls Attention to Public Engagement in Setting Science Policy”
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...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”
Hastings Center News
Scanning the Landscape of Physician-Assisted Death
The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine released Physician- Assisted Death: Scanning the Landscape, proceedings from a two-day workshop convened by the National Academies in February to take a...Hastings Center News
National Workshop on Science Communication Features Hastings Scholar
What are the right and wrong ways to speak about disability? Joel Michael Reynolds The Hastings Center’s Rice Family Postdoctoral Fellow in Bioethics and the Humanities, was an invited speaker...Read “National Workshop on Science Communication Features Hastings Scholar”
Hastings Center News
What is Normal? Why Medicine Should Reconsider the Concept
The idea that there’s a normal human body has traditionally been “the glue that renders any given modern concept of health, illness, or disease coherent,” writes Joel Michael Reynolds, the...Read “What is Normal? Why Medicine Should Reconsider the Concept”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Jahi McMath, Race, and Bioethics
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...Hastings Center News
Should Gene-Edited Mice Be Released to Control Lyme Disease?
Hastings Center research scholar Carolyn P. Neuhaus participated in a panel discussion on Martha’s Vineyard on July 12 to discuss a proposal to release genetically modified mice to curb the...Read “Should Gene-Edited Mice Be Released to Control Lyme Disease?”
Hastings Center News
Hastings Scholar on Ensuring Evidence-based Prescribing of Off-Label Drugs
It is legal and common for physicians to prescribe drugs for uses other than those for which they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But in a letter...Read “Hastings Scholar on Ensuring Evidence-based Prescribing of Off-Label Drugs”
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...Hastings Center News
Hastings Scholar Examines the Financial Burden of Long-Term Care
Nearly 11 million Americans use long-term care for help with daily tasks such as bathing and preparing meals, and yet few have private long-term care insurance. Thus, most of the...Read “Hastings Scholar Examines the Financial Burden of Long-Term Care”
Hastings Center News
Envisioning “Good Care at Home” for Older Adults in an Aging Society
How should we think about the ethics of everyday interpersonal relationships focused on giving and receiving care? When home is also a care setting, how can family members and other...Read “Envisioning “Good Care at Home” for Older Adults in an Aging Society”
Hastings Center News
What Can Frankenstein Teach Us About Living in the Genetics Age?
Join us to mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein with a panel discussion that will explore the novel from the perspectives of bioethics, literary criticism, and science...Read “What Can Frankenstein Teach Us About Living in the Genetics Age?”
Hastings Center News
Daniel Callahan Receives Health Care Ethics Medal
Hastings Center cofounder and President Emeritus Daniel Callahan was awarded the 2018 Edmund Pellegrino Medal for Healthcare Ethics. The award, given annually by Samford University’s Center for Faith and Health,...Hastings Center News
New Hastings Conversations Podcast: Should We Genetically Enhance Human Beings?
It has long been an ethical line not to be crossed: genetically enhancing humans – making us faster, smarter, or even kinder – in a way that is passed down...Read “New Hastings Conversations Podcast: Should We Genetically Enhance Human Beings?”
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”
Hastings Center News
Dan W. Brock Named 2018 Beecher Award Recipient
Dan W. Brock has been named the recipient of The Hastings Center’s 2018 Henry Knowles Beecher Award. Throughout his career, Dr. Brock, the Francis Glessner Lee Emeritus Professor of Medical...Hastings Center News
Bioethics Workshop for Secondary School Teachers Examines the Ethics of Human Gene Editing
Today’s young people will inevitably grapple with decisions about emerging biotechnologies, such as whether new gene editing technologies should be used to choose the traits of their children or enhance...Read “Bioethics Workshop for Secondary School Teachers Examines the Ethics of Human Gene Editing”
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
Bathroom Bioethics
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...Hastings Center News
Control and Responsible Innovation of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence and robotics are beginning to transform nearly every sector and facet of modern life. While the benefits and expected benefits could be vast, there are also concerns about...Read “Control and Responsible Innovation of Artificial Intelligence”
Hastings Center News
New in Braingenethics: What Role Should Genetic Testing Play in Psychiatric Care?
Several DNA tests claim to predict how well particular psychiatric medications are likely to work for individual patients with depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. And 23andMe just received approval to...Read “New in Braingenethics: What Role Should Genetic Testing Play in Psychiatric Care?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
He Jiankui: A Sorry Tale of High-Stakes Science
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
He Jiankui’s Genetic Misadventure, Part 2: How Different Are Chinese and Western Bioethics?
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...Read “He Jiankui’s Genetic Misadventure, Part 2: How Different Are Chinese and Western Bioethics?”
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”
Hastings Center News
Dr. Richard Payne Remembered
The Hastings Center’s staff and board of directors are profoundly saddened by the passing on January 3 of their friend, colleague, and trustee, Richard Payne. A neurologist, Dr. Payne was...Bioethics Forum Essay
He Jiankui’s Genetic Misadventure, Part 3: What Are the Major Ethical Issues?
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...Read “He Jiankui’s Genetic Misadventure, Part 3: What Are the Major Ethical Issues?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Prevention Optimism: Does It Raise Ethical Questions about PrEP for HIV?
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...Read “Prevention Optimism: Does It Raise Ethical Questions about PrEP for HIV?”
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Chinese Bioethicists Respond to the Case of He Jiankui
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...Read “Chinese Bioethicists Respond to the Case of He Jiankui”
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...Hastings Center News
Is it Ethical to Genetically Edit Sports Animals?
Breeders have worked for centuries to produce animals, such as greyhounds or racehorses, with traits for peak sport performance. Today, gene editing technologies such as CRISPR could accomplish in one...Hastings Center News
Stanley S. Bergen, Jr., Remembered
Hastings Center News
Public Conference Explores Genetics, Autism, and Identity
Read “Public Conference Explores Genetics, Autism, and Identity”
Hastings Center News
Hastings President Addresses Need for Responsible Science and Public Engagement
Read “Hastings President Addresses Need for Responsible Science and Public Engagement”
Hastings Center News
Dementia and the Ethics of Choosing When to Die
Bioethics Forum Essay
Is GINA Unjust?
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.Bioethics Forum Essay
Living with Pain and Opioid Addiction: Bioethics Narratives
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.Read “Living with Pain and Opioid Addiction: Bioethics Narratives”
Hastings Center News
How Can Bioethics Help Mitigate Climate Change? Hastings Center Explores Options
How might bioethics help address the threats posed by climate change? A Hastings Center meeting scoped out the options.Read “How Can Bioethics Help Mitigate Climate Change? Hastings Center Explores Options”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Living Good and Healthy Lives on a Changing Earth: What Should Bioethics Do?
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.Read “Living Good and Healthy Lives on a Changing Earth: What Should Bioethics Do?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Teaching Ethics to Adolescents
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.Hastings Center News
Daniel Callahan, 1930-2019
Bioethics Forum Essay
Daniel Callahan – A Remembrance
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
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.Hastings Center News
Hastings Kicks Off 50th Anniversary Celebrations
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.Hastings Center News
Bioethics and the Future: Can Progress Be Tamed?
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”
Hastings Center News
Award-Winning Essay: How Can Mobile Apps Improve Clinical Trials and Safeguard Participants?
Read “Award-Winning Essay: How Can Mobile Apps Improve Clinical Trials and Safeguard Participants?”
Hastings Center News
Five Things Bioethicists See in Our Future
Hastings Center News
Addressing Structural Injustice: A Call to Action for Bioethics
Tremendous wealth beside abject poverty, a widening income gap, the vast disparity between the life prospects of a black child and a white child -- structural injustices are pervasive in our country and many places in the world. What does bioethics have to say about these problems? The Hastings Center has committed to intensifying it efforts to address structural injustices. Ideas for doing so emerged in a plenary session organized by Hastings at the annual meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.Read “Addressing Structural Injustice: A Call to Action for Bioethics”
Hastings Center News
What’s Next for an Aging America: Palliative Care Leaders Assess the Future
The Collaborative for Palliative Care, in partnership with The Hastings Center, University of Rochester Finger Lakes Geriatrics Education Center (FLGEC), and Calvary Hospital, will host its annual conference this December 11th at Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y., titled The Next Generation of Palliative Care: Integrating Palliative and Social Ethics of Care.”Read “What’s Next for an Aging America: Palliative Care Leaders Assess the Future”
Bioethics Forum Essay
What Is Ethical Eating in the Age of Climate Change?
Are we ethically obliged to eat less meat? Bioethicists consider that question, and their role in addressing it.Bioethics Forum Essay
Chinese Bioethicists: He Jiankui’s Crime is More than Illegal Medical Practice
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.Read “Chinese Bioethicists: He Jiankui’s Crime is More than Illegal Medical Practice”
Bioethics Forum Essay
What’s Wrong with Virginity Testing?
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.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...Hastings Center News
Hastings Rice Family Fellow Founds New Journal on Disability
Read “Hastings Rice Family Fellow Founds New Journal on Disability”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Structural Racism, White Fragility, and Ventilator Rationing Policies
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.Read “Structural Racism, White Fragility, and Ventilator Rationing Policies”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethical Medicine Means Getting Political
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.Bioethics Forum Essay
Post-Covid Bioethics
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?Bioethics Forum Essay
Warp Speed Bioethics
It takes less time than ever to publish papers. But is quality sacrificed by doing bioethics at warp speed, especially during the Covid pandemic?Bioethics Forum Essay
Bioethics and Black Lives: A Call for Bioethics to Speak Against Racial Injustice
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.Read “Bioethics and Black Lives: A Call for Bioethics to Speak Against Racial Injustice”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Committing to Fight Racism
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.Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethicists as a Force for Institutional Change and Policies to Promote Equality
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.Read “Ethicists as a Force for Institutional Change and Policies to Promote Equality”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Covid-19 Makes Clear that Bioethics Must Confront Health Disparities
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.Read “Covid-19 Makes Clear that Bioethics Must Confront Health Disparities”
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
Is the Coronavirus Pandemic Accelerating Bioethics Nationalism?
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.Read “Is the Coronavirus Pandemic Accelerating Bioethics Nationalism?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
We Can’t Forget the Nation’s Other Epidemic
Covid isn’t merely overshadowing the drug overdose crisis—it’s directly worsening it.Hastings Center News
Remembering Renée Fox
Hastings Center News
Dan Brock Remembered
Hastings Center News
Award-Winning Essay: Technology Can’t Fix Algorithmic Injustice
The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the winner of the 2020 David Roscoe Award for an Early-Career Essay on Science, Ethics, and Society.Read “Award-Winning Essay: Technology Can’t Fix Algorithmic Injustice”
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
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.”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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Human Plasma and Bioethics Nationalism
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.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”
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes 14 New Fellows
The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 14 new Fellows.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”
Hastings Center News
Omenn and Darling Gift to Bolster Trust in Scientific Innovation
Preeminent science researcher and science policy expert Gilbert S. Omenn, MD, PhD., and national nonprofit leader Martha A. Darling have made a major gift supporting “trusted and trustworthy scientific innovation”...Read “Omenn and Darling Gift to Bolster Trust in Scientific Innovation”
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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...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes First Sadler Scholars
The Hastings Center is pleased to welcome the inaugural Sadler Scholars, a select group of six doctoral students with research interests relevant to bioethics who are from racial and ethnic...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?...Hastings Center News
The Hastings Center Recognizes Patricia A. King for Impact on Public Policy
Patricia A. King, JD, Professor Emerita of Georgetown Law, has been named the 2021 recipient of The Bioethics Founders’ Award, formerly the Henry Knowles Beecher Award. The award, given by...Read “The Hastings Center Recognizes Patricia A. King for Impact on Public Policy”
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Critical Moment in Bioethics:
Reckoning with Anti-Blackness through Intergenerational Dialogue This session described an anti-racism initiative co-led by The Hastings Center and a diverse steering committee of justice-focused bioethics scholars. This collaborative initiative reflects...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Launches Bioethics Timeline
From AIDS to Covid-19, how have pandemics and epidemics shaped health policy and bedside decision-making? How have major medical societies’ statements on discrimination and racial justice evolved over the decades?...Hastings Center News
New Resource: The Hastings Center Bioethics Timeline
From AIDS to Covid-19, how have pandemics and epidemics shaped health policy and bedside decision-making? How have major medical societies’ statements on discrimination and racial justice evolved over the decades?...Page
What Is Bioethics?
Bioethics is the interdisciplinary study of ethical issues arising in the life sciences, health care, technology, and health and science policy. It examines the ethical, legal, and social implications of such...Hastings Center News
Caste Author Isabel Wilkerson to Keynote National Forum, “Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities.”
The Hastings Center and the Association of American Medical Colleges Center for Health Justice Announce Two-Day Summit on Health Equity. SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 — The Hastings Center, a global ethics...Hastings Center News
Winning Essay: “Moral Bioenhancement as Potential Means of Oppression”
Faced with existential threats such as climate change, some scholars argue that “moral bioenhancements,” including psychotropics drugs and other interventions, are needed to improve our collective moral capacity to do...Read “Winning Essay: “Moral Bioenhancement as Potential Means of Oppression””
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.Bioethics Forum Essay
Individuals Declared Brain-Dead Remain Biologically Alive
A remarkable experiment raises anew questions about whether brain-death is really death.Read “Individuals Declared Brain-Dead Remain Biologically Alive”
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Exploring Bioethics: Curriculum Supplement from the National Institutes of Health
Exploring Bioethics complements high school life sciences curricula and enables teachers to stimulate conversation with their students around real-world ethical issues in the face of advancing technology through cases that...Read “Exploring Bioethics: Curriculum Supplement from the National Institutes of Health”
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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...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...Page
Caste Author Isabel Wilkerson to Keynote National Forum, “Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities.”
The Hastings Center and the Association of American Medical Colleges Center for Health Justice Announce Two-Day Summit on Health Equity. SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 — The Hastings Center, a global ethics...Page
AHA and ABIMF join as sponsors of “Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities”
The American Hospital Association and the ABIM Foundation join with the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association as sponsors of January’s national summit on health equity, convened by...Read “AHA and ABIMF join as sponsors of “Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities””
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Hastings Center and Cunniff Dixon Foundation Announce Nursing Awards
The Hastings Center and the Cunniff-Dixon Foundation are pleased to announce two new $25,000 awards to honor outstanding care provided by hospice and palliative care nurses to patients nearing the...Read “Hastings Center and Cunniff Dixon Foundation Announce Nursing Awards”
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Hastings Center Announces New Award for Exemplary End-of-Life Care for Vulnerable and Underserved
The award is named in honor of Dr. Richard Payne, an internationally acclaimed leader in palliative care. At the time of his death, Dr. Payne was a Trustee of the...Bioethics Forum Essay
Reckoning with Anti-Black Racism in Bioethics: Key Takeaways
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.Read “Reckoning with Anti-Black Racism in Bioethics: Key Takeaways”
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.Hastings Center News
Applications Open for Sadler Scholars
The Hastings Center is accepting applications for the 2022-23 Sadler Scholars, a select group of up to six doctoral students with research interests relevant to bioethics who are from racial...Hastings Center News
To Improve Health Equity, Look at Politics
Daniel Dawes, a key figure in shaping the Affordable Care Act, urged the audience at last month’s health care summit to look upstream and focus on the political and structural...Bioethics Forum Essay
Bioethics in the Second Cold War
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 Forum Essay
Bioethics Without Roe
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?Hastings Center News
Sheldon Krimsky Remembered
The Hastings Center staff and community are saddened by the death of Sheldon Krimsky, a Hastings Center fellow, who warned of the risk of conflicts of interest from private companies...Page
Justice in Health: Equipping Bioethics to Improve Policy and Practice
Project Director: Josephine Johnston Funder: The Greenwall Foundation This project was a collaboration between an independent antiracism task force of bioethicists from across the United States and The Hastings Center, as part...Read “Justice in Health: Equipping Bioethics to Improve Policy and Practice”
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes the 2022-2023 Sadler Scholars
The Hastings Center is pleased to welcome the 2022-2023 Sadler Scholars, a select group of nine doctoral students with research relevant to bioethics who are from racial and ethnic communities...Read “Hastings Center Welcomes the 2022-2023 Sadler Scholars”
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.Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Recognizes Anita L. Allen and Farhat Moazam with 2022 Bioethics Founders’ Award
Anita L. Allen, JD, PhD, the Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law, and Farhat Moazam, MD, PhD,...Hastings Center News
New Project: Ethical Challenges of Community Health Centers
The Hastings Center has launched a national study of nonprofit community health centers in the United States to learn about and describe the nature and extent of the ethical challenges...Read “New Project: Ethical Challenges of Community Health Centers”
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Communicating Ethical Challenges in Crises:
Bioethics With Bigger Impact November 15, 2022 Event transcript Perspectives in Biology and Medicine The chaos that enveloped the Covid-19 response and the loss of trust in experts has laid...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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Unpacking Neglected Social Factors to Ensure Impact
Bioethics With Bigger Impact February 7, 2023 2 PM EST Transcript Perspectives in Biology and Medicine It is imperative to understand the social and ethical roots of our present conversations...Hastings Center News
Special Report Calls for Improved Oversight On “Chimeric” Human-Animal Research
A new report on the ethics of crossing species boundaries by inserting human cells into (nonhuman) animals for research purposes–research surrounded by debate–makes recommendations clarifying the ethical issues and calling...Read “Special Report Calls for Improved Oversight On “Chimeric” Human-Animal Research”
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
Enough Already with the Medical Cheap Shots
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...Page
Caribbean Bioethics Education Program
Principal Investigator: Cheryl MacPherson, Windward Islands Research and Education Foundation and St. George’s University, Grenada Hastings Center Investigators: Mildred Solomon, Carolyn Neuhaus, and Mercer Gary Funder: Fogarty International Center and...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
Health Equity Without Ethics Perpetuates Marginalization
To eliminate a quality metric for clinical ethics is at odds with good clinical practice and it reinforces structural inequality.Read “Health Equity Without Ethics Perpetuates Marginalization”
Bioethics Forum Essay
AI Meets Bioethics Literature: How Did It Do?
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.Bioethics Forum Essay
Remembering James F. Drane
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.Hastings Center News
Johnston Elected to International Association of Bioethics Board
Josephine Johnston, a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center, was elected to the board of the International Association of Bioethics. Johnston, who is based in New Zealand, will represent...Read “Johnston Elected to International Association of Bioethics Board”
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes 2023-2024 Sadler Scholars
The Hastings Center has selected six doctoral students in fields such as population health, social ethics, and sociology as the 2023-24 Sadler Scholars. The Sadler Scholars are a select group...Bioethics Forum Essay
We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us
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.Hastings Center News
“Packed to the Brim With Unique Insights”
Justice and Water. Race in Bioethics. Reproductive Ethics. Global Health Justice. These were among the wide range of topics explored in The Hastings Center Summer Bioethics Program for Underrepresented Undergraduates,...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Next President’s Council on Bioethics: Who Cares What It Does?
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...Read “The Next President’s Council on Bioethics: Who Cares What It Does?”
Hastings Center News
It’s Time to See Clinician Burnout for What It Is
“Clinician burnout is one of the most tenacious problems facing the contemporary health system. Recent years have seen a plethora of guidance on reducing burnout and improving health care workers’ well-being following the pandemic, but...Hastings Center News
Q & A with Vardit Ravitsky
Welcome to The Hastings Center! You join the Center from the University of Montreal, where you were a professor in the bioethics program in the School of Public Health. You’re...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,...Hastings Center News
Journal Editors Issue Guidance on the Use of AI in Scholarly Publishing
Editors at seven scholarly journals published recommendations on the responsible use of generative artificial intelligence tools by authors, reviewers, and editors. The recommendations ban regarding generative AI as an author – but allow its use to generate text and illustrations. Gregory E. Kaebnick, editor of the Hastings Center Report, is lead author of the recommendations.Read “Journal Editors Issue Guidance on the Use of AI in Scholarly Publishing”
Hastings Center News
Climate Bioethics Program Launched
The Hastings Center launched a program on climate bioethics in partnership with the Caribbean Research Ethics Initiative (CREEi) and Clarkson University. The program will recruit eight Caribbean bioethics scholars to spend...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...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”
Hastings Center News
Introducing Voices in Bioethics from the Caribbean
What does it take to assure that ecotourism is done ethically, taking into account its impact on local residents and local ecosystems? Should doctors tell breast cancer patients all their...Hastings Center News
Remembering Nancy Neveloff Dubler (1941-2024)
Nancy Neveloff Dubler, a Hastings Center fellow whose pathbreaking work shaped the field of medical ethics, died on April 14. Dubler worked on a wide range of bioethics topics, but...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Open House: June 13
Join us on our campus overlooking the Hudson River for a conversation about AI, Health, and Bioethics featuring Leigh Hafrey, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, and...Hastings Center News
Ravitsky Discusses AI in Health Care on Radio Show
Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky was a guest on Doctor Radio Reports on SiriusXM on June 4, discussing AI in health care and other bioethics issues. Asked whether she thinks...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes 2024-2025 Sadler Scholars
The Hastings Center has selected seven doctoral students in the fields of neuroscience, human genetics, sociology, global health, and health policy as the 2024-2025 Sadler Scholars. The Sadler Scholar initiative,...Bioethics Forum Essay
Priced Out of Publishing in Bioethics Journals
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.Hastings Center News
Putting Bioethics to Work on AI, Trust, and Health Care
Artificial intelligence is changing the landscape of health care delivery and biomedical research, but will patients, health care providers, researchers, and the public trust new AI-based tools? And how should...Read “Putting Bioethics to Work on AI, Trust, and Health Care”
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes 2024 Fellows
The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of the 2024 fellows. Hastings Center fellows are a group of about 300 individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has informed...
