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The Hastings Center — Health, Science, and Technology Ethics
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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...From Bioethics Briefings
Environment, Ethics, and Human Health
Framing the Issue Many of the most challenging ethical questions of our time address interactions between human health and the environment: How can we balance protection for the environment with...Bioethics Forum Essay
Fake News: A Role for Neuroethics?
Fake news proliferates on the internet, and it sometimes has consequential effects. It may have played a role in the recent election of Donald Trump to the White House, and...Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethical Supervision?
As I read a recently published report of an interesting and important placebo-controlled trial of arthroscopic shoulder surgery, one sentence in particular caught my eye: “The study was designed under...Hastings Center News
Looking for the Psychosocial Effects of Genomic Test Results
For the last quarter century, researchers have been asking whether genetic test results might have negative psychosocial effects. Anxiety, depression, disrupted relationships, and heightened stigmatization have all been posited as...Read “Looking for the Psychosocial Effects of Genomic Test Results”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Businesses, Guns, and Human Rights
The mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., resulted in the deaths of 17 people. Tragically, from January 1 to March 21, 2018, there were 3,088...Bioethics Forum Essay
Gun Violence, Shame, and Social Change
The language of shame has been prominent in the aftermath of the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida. In a March 23 essay in The New Yorker,...Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethical Perspectives on Advance Directives for Dementia
Four articles in the Hastings Center Report make an array of claims about whether advance directives should or should not be used to instruct caregivers to withhold oral feeding of...Read “Ethical Perspectives on Advance Directives for Dementia”
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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...Bioethics Forum Essay
What’s Wrong with a Fertility Doctor Using His Own Sperm?
It was unethical for a fertility doctor to use his own sperm to inseminate patients without their consent. But what are the legal harms to the women? To their children?Read “What’s Wrong with a Fertility Doctor Using His Own Sperm?”
Hastings Center News
Hastings President Addresses the Question: Is Ethical AI an Oxymoron?
As artificial intelligence transforms health care, what should be done to assure that it brings about improvements and greater equity? To address those questions, Hastings Center President Mildred Solomon joined a panel at the Aspen Ideas: Health Festival called “Ethical Artificial Intelligence: Oxymoron or Possibility?”Read “Hastings President Addresses the Question: Is Ethical AI an Oxymoron?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
From Outcry to Solidarity with Migrants: What Is the Good We Can Do?
Another June. Another public outcry about cruelty as policy harming migrants in United States custody. This summer, the photo of a drowned family, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter, Valeria, of El Salvador, shocks the conscience. Reporters are documenting the inhumane conditions in a Border Patrol facility where hundreds of children have been held. How should our field respond?Read “From Outcry to Solidarity with Migrants: What Is the Good We Can Do?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
It’s Unethical to Use Dental X-Rays to Send Migrant Children to Adult Detention Facilities
The U.S. government is using dental scans to determine if migrant youths are over age 18. The scans are inaccurate for this purpose, and yet they determine if children are sent to adult detention centers.Read “It’s Unethical to Use Dental X-Rays to Send Migrant Children to Adult Detention Facilities”
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.Bioethics Forum Essay
Hannah Arendt in St. Peter’s Square
Neither one of us expected to be talking about Hannah Arendt at the Vatican. We had been invited to give talks at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the scientific and ethical challenges posed by personalized medicine. Walking across the cobblestones of St. Peter’s Square we began to discuss how society regulates biomedical research. Are institutional review boards capable of dealing with innovations like personalized medicine? Are they too bound by regulations? Can they ask larger questions of meaning when simply following the rules won't suffice? And most worrisome, has their bureaucratic function caused them to mistake regulatory compliance for ethical reflection?Bioethics Forum Essay
Citizen Science: Potential Benefits and Ethical Challenges
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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”
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Scholars Respond to Prison Sentence of Researcher Who Created First Gene-Edited Babies
The Compassionate Use Advisory Committee, headed by Hastings Center Fellow Arthur Caplan, of NYU Langone, received the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the Food and Drug Administration’s Innovation Award. The committee was recognized for transforming how expanded access requests, also known as compassionate use requests, are granted by drug developers.Hastings Center News
Expert in Artificial Intelligence Named Hastings Center Senior Advisor
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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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Why Health Care Organizations Need Technology Ethics Committees
There is big money in using technology to find information in patient and medical staff data. Companies are rushing to cash in. The Food and Drug Administration has approved more than 40 artificial intelligence-based products for use in medicine. Tens of thousands of medical phone apps are tracking patients and gathering detailed medical information about them. These new technologies bring new ethical questions that health care organizations are poorly equipped to answer.Read “Why Health Care Organizations Need Technology Ethics Committees”
Bioethics Forum Essay
COVID-19 and the Global Ethics Freefall
Since the initial outbreak in Wuhan last December, the national and global responses to COVID-19 have been in ethics freefall.Hastings Center News
America’s Bioethicists and Health Care Leaders: Government Must Use Federal Powers To Fight COVID-19
Nearly 1,400 of the nation’s most prominent bioethicists and health leaders signed an urgent letter to Congress and the White House, imploring the U.S. government to immediately use its federal power and funds to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic as a matter of moral imperative. The petition was developed by Mildred Solomon, president of The Hastings Center, and Lawrence Gostin, a Hastings Fellow and director of the O’Neill Center for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.Bioethics Forum Essay
The Price of Going Back to Work Too Soon
Bioethics Forum Essay
On Being an Elder in a Pandemic
Do the elderly have special obligations during a pandemic, that is, something more than the duty we all have for hand washing, social distancing, and so on? I believe the answer is, yes, and foremost among these is an obligation for parsimonious use of newly scarce and expensive health care resources.Bioethics Forum Essay
Please Don’t (Need to) Use My Work
I helped develop guidelines for the ethical allocation of scarce resources during a public health emergency, such as a pandemic..I hope my contributions have an impact. I especially hope to see my work used since it emphasizes the perspectives of minority and underserved communities, who tend to have less voice in health policy. But now I find myself dreading the use of my work.Bioethics Forum Essay
Denying Ventilators to Covid-19 Patients with Prior DNR Orders is Unethical
Previously-stated DNR status would seem irrelevant to ventilator allocation, and yet some existing and proposed guidelines for triage during a public health emergency list DNR status in the list of criteria for excluding patients from getting ventilators or other life-saving health care. This approach is in direct opposition to the generally agreed-upon goal of maximizing the number of survivors, and could result in confusion and public mistrust of the health care system.Read “Denying Ventilators to Covid-19 Patients with Prior DNR Orders is Unethical”
Bioethics Forum Essay
When to Reopen the Nation is an Ethics Question—Not Only a Scientific One
As the world reels from the Covid-19 pandemic, two things have become very clear: the health impacts of the disease are devastating, but the aggressive social distancing policies currently being used to flatten the curve also have serious costs. As a result, the question of when and how to reopen the nation is on everyone’s mind. Do we open quickly in an effort to kick-start the economy? Or do we remain under lockdown as long as possible to stop the spread of the virus?Read “When to Reopen the Nation is an Ethics Question—Not Only a Scientific One”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Social-Change Games Can Help Us Understand the Public Health Choices We Face
Before there was the Covid-19 pandemic, there was Pandemic. This tabletop game, in which players collaborate to fight disease outbreaks, debuted in 2007. Expansions feature weaponized pathogens, historic pandemics, zoonotic diseases, and vaccine development races. Game mechanics modelled on pandemic vectors provide multiple narratives: battle, quest, detection, discovery. There is satisfaction in playing “against” disease–and winning. Real pandemic is not as tidy as a game. But can games support understanding about the societal challenges we now face? Yes.Read “Social-Change Games Can Help Us Understand the Public Health Choices We Face”
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.”Hastings Center News
New Project: Building an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health Care
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Hastings Center News
Can AI Reduce Inequity and Improve Empathy in Medicine? A Conversation Between Eric Topol and Mildred Solomon
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Ethics of Treating the President
Concerns about the health status of sitting presidents of the United States can raise significant questions in medical ethics, notably regarding the scope of a president’s right to confidentiality and of the public’s need—or right—to know about the president’s health, the role and responsibilities of the president’s physician, and the appropriateness of offering unapproved treatments. These concerns are heightened during the global pandemic for which there is no cure or vaccine and limited information about treatments.Hastings Center News
Protecting Communities from Covid-19
FOUR STEPS TO PROTECT COMMUNITIES FROM COVID-19 AND RESTORE THE ECONOMY The Hastings Center, the oldest independent, nonpartisan research institute in the world focused on social and ethical issues in...Bioethics Forum Essay
Prioritizing the “1a”: Ethically Allocating Scarce Covid Vaccines to Health Care Workers
Beginning this week, guarded vehicles loaded with the first Covid-19 vaccine authorized in the United States are fanning out to hospitals across the country. In vaccine prioritization protocols health care workers, along with nursing home residents, make up phase “1a” – those who are first in line to be vaccinated. While much attention has been paid to who should come next, less is known about how hospitals are allocating vaccine doses among their staff. For many medical centers, the first shipments will only be enough to vaccinate a fraction of their workers. Who goes first within the “1a” category, and how are such decisions made?Read “Prioritizing the “1a”: Ethically Allocating Scarce Covid Vaccines to Health Care Workers”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Ashamed to Be Vaccinated? The Ethics of Health Care Employees Forgoing Unfair Priority
Suppose you are young, healthy, employed in a health care system and that your line of work does not require leaving the low-risk comfort of your home. Now suppose that your employer offers you a vaccine. You know there are others in your community who are at greater risk of contracting and dying from Covid-19 than you. Should you accept the dose?Read “Ashamed to Be Vaccinated? The Ethics of Health Care Employees Forgoing Unfair Priority”
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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”
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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”
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Vaccine Mandates and Passports: Are They Legal and Ethical?
HASTINGS CONVERSATIONS: A SERIES Although roughly 60% of adults in the United States have had at least one Covid vaccine shot, many Americans remain reluctant, or outright opposed, to getting...Read “Vaccine Mandates and Passports: Are They Legal and Ethical?”
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?...Page
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at The Hastings Center
Table of contents: Introduction The Hastings Center is committed to the long-term work of ensuring diversity, equity, and inclusion in our scholarship, in the field of bioethics, and in the...Read “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at The Hastings Center”
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...Page
Event to Examine Disability as a Creative Force
SEPTEMBER 22, 2021: The Hastings Center, a global ethics leader, announce that three artists and writers will lead a special virtual event — “Enjoying: Disability as a Creative Force” —...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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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
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””
Bioethics Forum Essay
Vaccination Discrimination Goes Against Nursing Ethics
Some health care providers are prioritizing patients who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 over those who are unvaccinated. This is unethical.Read “Vaccination Discrimination Goes Against Nursing Ethics”
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...Hastings Center News
Report Examines Racism & Health, Calls on Bioethics to Lead Change
A new Hastings Center special report calls on the field of bioethics to take the lead in efforts to remedy racial injustice and health inequities in the United States. As...Read “Report Examines Racism & Health, Calls on Bioethics to Lead Change”
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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
After Roe: “Ethically Unjustifiable” Waiting Period for Female Sterilization
The current Medicaid-mandated sterilization waiting period for females—30 days in most circumstances—is clinically and ethically unjustifiable, states an essay in the latest Hastings Center Report. The authors argue that the...Read “After Roe: “Ethically Unjustifiable” Waiting Period for Female Sterilization”
HASTINGS CENTER NEWS
Neuroscience & Society Series
Series Editor: Gregory E. Kaebnick Funder: Dana Foundation The Hastings Center Report will launch a series of open-access articles and essays on the ethical, legal, and social implications of new...Page
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Should Ethicists Be at the Table in Public Health Policy Deliberations?
In a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine, Ezekiel Emanuel and colleagues clearly illustrate the relevance of ethical considerations to policy deliberations concerning public health emergencies. But do ethicists belong at the table?Read “Should Ethicists Be at the Table in Public Health Policy Deliberations?”
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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
Abortion Miscoding—Legal Risks for Clinicians and Hospital Systems
A new commentary considers the legal risks that physicians and health care facilities may incur when they miscode patients’ medical records to conceal an abortion. The article, published in JAMA,...Read “Abortion Miscoding—Legal Risks for Clinicians and Hospital Systems”
Hastings Center News
Countering Global Threats to Academic Freedom
When a psychology professor in Kentucky created a racial equity training program at her university, she received death threats. Efforts to silence, attack, and intimidate teachers and students are on...Page
Project to Examine “Deliberate Extinction” of Species
October 4, 2023 – A new project at The Hastings Center will propose recommendations for deciding if especially dangerous species should be eradicated with gene editing technology. Candidate species could...Read “Project to Examine “Deliberate Extinction” of Species”
Hastings Center News
AI Code of Conduct Draft is Released; Submit Your Comments
A draft code of conduct for artificial intelligence in health, health care, and biomedical was released on April 8 by the National Academy of Medicine’s AI Code of Conduct initiative;...Read “AI Code of Conduct Draft is Released; Submit Your Comments”