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.Bioethics Forum Essay
From Jackie and Me: A Plea for Opt-Out Organ Donation
Three weeks ago, my dear friend Jackie, a internationally recognized bioethicist in her fifties who lives in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, went to bed with what she thought was a bad case of...Read “From Jackie and Me: A Plea for Opt-Out Organ Donation”
Bioethics Forum Essay
California’s Strides in Providing Health Care for Undocumented Immigrants
I had just turned 5 in November 1994 when my fellow Californians voted to pass Proposition 187 in a draconian attempt to restrict undocumented immigrants from receiving health care, education, and other...Read “California’s Strides in Providing Health Care for Undocumented Immigrants”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Supreme Court Decision in King v Burwell: Backstory and Next Steps
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) relies on three primary strategies for expanding health insurance coverage. First, it regulates the insurance market to prevent practices that made it difficult or...Read “Supreme Court Decision in King v Burwell: Backstory and Next Steps”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Rats Have Empathy, But What About the Scientists Who Experiment on Them?
Decades of experiments have shown that rats are smart individuals that feel pain and pleasure, care about one another, can read others’ emotions, and will help unfamiliar rats even at a cost...Read “Rats Have Empathy, But What About the Scientists Who Experiment on Them?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
When Words Matter: Medical Education and the Care of Transgender Patients
I was only there to learn how to place IV lines. But as my anesthesia attending and I gathered our needles, tourniquet, and gauze, I noticed that our patient, whom...Read “When Words Matter: Medical Education and the Care of Transgender Patients”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Suing for Justice? More on the U.S. STD Studies in Guatemala
On April 1, a $1 billion lawsuit was filed by three law firms based in the United States and Venezuela against Johns Hopkins University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Bristol-Myers Squibb on...Read “Suing for Justice? More on the U.S. STD Studies in Guatemala”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Drug that Cried “Feminism”
Branded as “The Little Pink Pill” and “Female Viagra,” flibanserin, Sprout Pharmaceuticals’ only drug, was recently resubmitted to the Food and Drug Administration for approval for hypoactive sexual desire disorder...Bioethics Forum Essay
New York City’s Compromise on Dangerous Circumcision Practice Leaves Infants at Risk
I would guess that most Americans, even Jewish Americans, had never heard of metzitzah b’peh until the recent controversy between ultra-Orthodox Jews and the New York City Department of Health....Read “New York City’s Compromise on Dangerous Circumcision Practice Leaves Infants at Risk”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Lessons from Ebola: Presidential Bioethics Commission Releases Recommendations on Preparedness for Public Health Emergencies
This week the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues released a brief, Ethics and Ebola: Public Health Planning and Response,to the administration and the public on ethical preparedness for...Bioethics Forum Essay
Measles, Vaccination, and the Tragedy of the Commons
After having been virtually eliminated in the United States in the year 2000, measles have made a comeback, with nearly 150 cases in 17 states and nearly 30 confirmed cases of the...Bioethics Forum Essay
Vaccine Exemptions and the Church-State Problem
The current measles outbreak has brought public attention to the ease with which vaccine exemptions are available. As the media continually inform us, 48 states allow for religious exemptions, while...Bioethics Forum Essay
Have a Miscarriage and Go to Jail? Potential Consequences of Personhood Amendments
When she was 18, Carmen Guadalupe Vasquez Aldana was sentenced to 30 years in jail. Her crime was delivering a stillborn baby. She was suspected of having had an abortion....Read “Have a Miscarriage and Go to Jail? Potential Consequences of Personhood Amendments”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Don’t Categorically Refuse CPR to Ebola Patients
Recently it has been argued that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) should, as a matter of policy, not be offered to persons with Ebola disease. Such a categorical restriction of CPR based...Bioethics Forum Essay
Two Cheers for Choosing Wisely
The Choosing Wisely campaign is one of the most exciting experiments in health care in quite a while. If it lives up to its potential, Choosing Wisely could prevent some of the...Bioethics Forum Essay
Trapper’s Care in the Animal ER and Frank Talk about Costs
“The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful...Read “Trapper’s Care in the Animal ER and Frank Talk about Costs”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Responding to Ebola: Health Care Professionals’ Obligations to Provide Care
As health care institutions in the United States prepare for Ebola patients, many have adopted the policy that those providing hands-on care should come from a pool of volunteers. Given...Read “Responding to Ebola: Health Care Professionals’ Obligations to Provide Care”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Responding to Ebola: Questions about Resuscitation
While details of the deaths of patients in Dallas and Madrid from Ebola are not public, their passing prompts questions about resuscitation in individuals infected with the virus. To date,...Bioethics Forum Essay
The VA Crisis is Fundamentally an Ethics Crisis
The crisis and failure of caregiving that have engulfed the Veterans Health Administration cannot be solved with increased resources or even by hiring more doctors and nurses. Additional resources are...Bioethics Forum Essay
Hobby Lobby Decision Likely to Increase Health Care Inequity
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al. v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., et al., could undermine a central goal of the Patient Protection and...Read “Hobby Lobby Decision Likely to Increase Health Care Inequity”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Chronicling the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Through Art
I was born in the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital in 1974 where the Tuskegee Syphilis Study took place. I have had a lifelong curiosity about the ethics of the study and...Bioethics Forum Essay
How I Learned Bioethics in Medical School
The director of the medical intensive care unit did not like the idea of having a bioethicist around. But she agreed to the request, and there he was on rounds,...Bioethics Forum Essay
LEGGO the Logo? Why Pharma Logos Belong on CME
Several weeks ago, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) announced a new rule banning corporate logos from accredited educational materials for physicians. The ACCME sets standards for the...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Latest Challenge to Health Privacy: Health Care Consolidation
The American health care industry is undergoing a transformation in several respects, including the substantial integration and consolidation of health care providers. Three of the leading ways in which this...Read “The Latest Challenge to Health Privacy: Health Care Consolidation”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Despite the Risks, and Because of Them, the FDA Should Permit Recycling Medical Implants
It is hard to quibble with the fact that Dr. Daniel Mascarenhas is breaking the law. It is also hard to quibble with the fact that he is a hero. The...Read “Despite the Risks, and Because of Them, the FDA Should Permit Recycling Medical Implants”
Bioethics Forum Essay
What Role Should Bioethics Play in Global Health?
I appreciate Dr. Benatar’s essay on the role of bioethics in confronting the challenges of global health inequities. His article aptly catalogues the contributing factors–both specific to health and otherwise–that weigh heavily...Bioethics Forum Essay
Truvada: No Substitute for Responsible Sex
A new debate is surging through the gay male population in the United States: should gay men take a drug that can reduce their risk of contracting HIV? The drug...Bioethics Forum Essay
Bioethics and the Dogma of “Brain Death”
Two cases involving “brain death” have received considerable public attention, including commentary by several well-known bioethicists. In commenting on these cases the bioethicists have stated, in no uncertain terms, that...Bioethics Forum Essay
“Health Care as Hospitality”: Organizational Ethics in a Migrant Health Clinic
Geylang is the red-light district of Singapore, east of the city center. It would be easy, and wrong, to describe Geylang as a different world from the skyscrapers and malls...Read ““Health Care as Hospitality”: Organizational Ethics in a Migrant Health Clinic”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Genetic Information Is Not Always Benign
Ethicists and others have been concerned that the disclosure of genetic information to patients might have negative consequences. The suspicion has been that negative effects, say, becoming depressed, are particularly...Bioethics Forum Essay
New Recommendations for Research with Human Subjects Who Lack Consent Capacity
The New York State Task Force on Life and the Law released its Report and Recommendations for Research with Human Subjects Who Lack Consent Capacity today, which analyzes the ethical and legal implications...Read “New Recommendations for Research with Human Subjects Who Lack Consent Capacity”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Bloomberg’s Health Legacy: What Inflames Consumer Passions in the Food Wars?
After the Hastings Center Report published my essay on Mayor Bloomberg’s health legacy — with its key ideas spread through the popular media (here and here) — vitriolic messages streamed...Read “Bloomberg’s Health Legacy: What Inflames Consumer Passions in the Food Wars?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Canada Confronts its Own “Tuskegee” Studies
Last summer’s revelations that malnourished Aboriginals in Canada served as unwitting and unprotected subjects in nutritional experiments in the 1940s and 1950s brought a sharp reaction–though the research took place...Bioethics Forum Essay
In Search of Sterility
In the November-December issue of the Hastings Center Report I wrote about voluntary sterilization for childfree women. The article came about through my inability to get sterilized as a childfree woman. I...Bioethics Forum Essay
Doctors Googling Patients
In the current issue of the Hastings Center Report, two teams of physicians and ethicists at Penn State consider the ethics of using online research and social networking tools to learn...Bioethics Forum Essay
Charging Smokers Higher Health Insurance Rates: Is it Ethical?
Smoking-related illnesses cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars a year in health care expenditures and lost productivity, and claim hundreds of thousands of lives.” Given the enormous...Read “Charging Smokers Higher Health Insurance Rates: Is it Ethical?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Supreme Court and the Fight Against AIDS
The salience of the Constitution’s spending clause to the public’s health is not often appreciated–empowering the federal government to “provide for the common Defense and general Welfare.” But the power...Bioethics Forum Essay
“Undocumented Doctors” and the Health of the Dreamers
Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine’s recent announcement that it would accept applications from Dreamers – young undocumented immigrants eligible for Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA)status – is an innovative and welcome...Read ““Undocumented Doctors” and the Health of the Dreamers”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Sports Concussions and Sandbagging
Sport-related concussions are a significant public health problem, and concussion management is one of the most controversial issues in sports medicine. The latest international consensus statement on concussion in sport advises that...Bioethics Forum Essay
Touching History
AIDS in New York: The First Five Years is an exhibit running this summer at The New-York Historical Society, an organization so venerable that its name reflects how the city’s name...Bioethics Forum Essay
Learning to Talk Like a Doctor
Three years before beginning medical school, I got off a bus in Granada, Spain and met the family I would be living with for four months. My host parents, Carmen...Bioethics Forum Essay
Why Target National Obesity Rates?
In a recent article in the Hastings Center Report, Daniel Callahan argues that obesity is a serious public health problem facing the U.S. and suggests a variety of strategies for combating this problem....Bioethics Forum Essay
Obesity and Public Health: No Place for Shame
In his article, “Obesity: Chasing an Elusive Epidemic,” published in the Hastings Center Report, Daniel Callahan posits that obesity is so widespread and embedded in our culture that most if not...Bioethics Forum Essay
Controversy in the Hastings Center Report: Responding to an Article on Obesity
Nearly everyone agrees that obesity is a significant public health problem in the United States, and nearly everyone agrees that the public health responses to it so far have been...Read “Controversy in the Hastings Center Report: Responding to an Article on Obesity”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Rites and Wrongs: Changing a Ritual from Within
The previously obscure ultra-Orthodox Jewish rite of metzitzah b’peh (oral suction) has burst into the news lately and raised critical questions about genital surgery, consent, First Amendment rights, tradition, and...Bioethics Forum Essay
Why Target National Obesity Rates?
In a recent article in the Hastings Center Report, Daniel Callahan argues that obesity is a serious public health problem facing the U.S. and suggests a variety of strategies for combating this problem....Bioethics Forum Essay
A More Ethical Strategy Against Obesity: Changing the Built Environment
Since the 1960s, obesity has become one of the most significant health problems in industrialized nations. In the U.S., the percentage of obese adults increased from 13 percent in the 1960s...Read “A More Ethical Strategy Against Obesity: Changing the Built Environment”
Bioethics Forum Essay
A Body With Bullet Holes and the Right to Arm Ourselves
At the end of an otherwise quiet night, we were paged to the emergency department for a stat trauma. A man with multiple gunshot wounds was wheeled by paramedics into...Read “A Body With Bullet Holes and the Right to Arm Ourselves”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Making an Example of Martin Shkreli
Last month, the New York Times reported that the price of a 62-year old little-known drug, Daraprim (pyrimethamine), rose overnight from $18 to $750 a pill. About 100 pills are needed to treat...Bioethics Forum Essay
TEDMED 2012: Great Expectations
TEDMED, which took place in Washington last week, was a beehive of doctors, nurses, medical students, leaders of medical institutions and government health agencies, entrepreneurs, engineers, patients, patient advocates, athletes,...Bioethics Forum Essay
What is an Ounce of Prevention Really Worth?
Is there an ethical case to be made for questioning the homespun wisdom, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?” An argument along those lines caught a...Bioethics Forum Essay
Why Shame Won’t Stop Obesity
I am still in medical school, but today I sigh the frustrated, disapproving sigh of a fully trained doctor. “You know,” I scold the middle-aged man in front of me,...Bioethics Forum Essay
Proof that I Like Penises
So, a new randomized control trial comes out showing that circumcision in adult males can dramatically reduce HIV infection rates, and all my friends who opted for circumcising their baby...Bioethics Forum Essay
Taking People at Their Word
When I was a student, I loved to read Freud and Nietzsche and Marx. I was into what the great French philosopher Paul Ricoeur called “the hermeneutics of suspicion.” Sex,...Bioethics Forum Essay
Explaining More, Doing Less
As if we didn’t have enough reasons to wish for better informed consent practices in the United States, here’s another: evidence that, if physicians spent more time seeking truly informed...Bioethics Forum Essay
Really Changing Sex
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that New York City “is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificates even if they have...Bioethics Forum Essay
Ashley and the Dangerous Myth of the Selfless Parent
Because I’ve acted as a professional advocate for people born with norm-challenging bodies, quite a number of strangers and familiars have been writing to ask me what I think of...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
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
How and Why to Take “Gender Identity Disorder” Out of the DSM
As a wizened gender rights advocate, I know better than to assume the activists making the most noise are actually representative of “the community” they insist they represent. So, while...Read “How and Why to Take “Gender Identity Disorder” Out of the DSM”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Medicine Needs a Declaration of Independence from Cosmetic Procedures
What is medicine for? I found this question on my mind recently, not only because I had been discussing it with a group of thoughtful medical students to whom I...Read “Medicine Needs a Declaration of Independence from Cosmetic Procedures”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Intersex and Sports: Back to the Same Old Game
If you’re trying to make sense of the “decisions” just made in Miami about sex-typing in sports, and you’re struggling, join the club. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) presumably tasked...Bioethics Forum Essay
Bad Vibrations
In “The Rhetoric of Dehumanization: An Analysis of Medical Reports of the Tuskegee Syphilis Project,” Martha Solomon brilliantly demonstrates how the project’s researchers hid their work in plain sight. Specifically,...Bioethics Forum Essay
Attenuated Thoughts
I was invited to join the Seattle Growth Attenuation and Ethics Working Group — collective author of the lead article in the current issue of the Hastings Center Report — but...Bioethics Forum Essay
Pink Boys with Puppy Dog Tails
In my e-mail in-box a few weeks ago, I received a polite message from a woman named Sarah Hoffman who was writing to ask why I was being such a...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Tale of Tea with Jim the Third
It was one of those messages I get occasionally, this time from a man who had suddenly realized we were just a few blocks away from each other. The writer’s...Bioethics Forum Essay
Dying for Some Standards: Broken Medical Systems as Revealed by a New FDA Warning
I’d like to say I was shocked when a colleague sent me the warning letter from Eli Lilly relaying results of a French study that indicate a 30 percent increased risk...Read “Dying for Some Standards: Broken Medical Systems as Revealed by a New FDA Warning”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Blotto, Not Beautiful, Medicine
Reading Frank Bruni’s recent review in the New York Times of Provocateur, a chic bar in the meatpacking district, got me thinking about an argument I’d had recently with a...Bioethics Forum Essay
“M,” Polly, and the Right to Die
Another landmark right-to-die case hit the U.K. headlines last week. A High Court judge ruled, in W v M & Ors [2011] EWHC 2443 (Fam), that a 52-year- old woman...Bioethics Forum Essay
Administration Reveals Lack of CLASS
The demise of the CLASS (Community Living Assistance Services and Support) Act is the calamitous result of ideological warfare and political cowardice. It would have provided a modest benefit –...Bioethics Forum Essay
New Hope for Detecting Consciousness in Vegetative Patients: Ethical Implications
Patients diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state have figured prominently in the law and medical ethics relating to end-of-life decisions since the case of Karen Quinlan in 1976....Read “New Hope for Detecting Consciousness in Vegetative Patients: Ethical Implications”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Case for Expanding Physician-Assisted Death to Psychiatric Conditions
Should people suffering from psychiatric conditions, such as severe, prolonged depression, that have not responded to treatment, be eligible for physician-assisted death? Most jurisdictions that allow PAD do not permit...Read “The Case for Expanding Physician-Assisted Death to Psychiatric Conditions”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Canada Marches toward Expansive Aid in Dying
Canada is on track to enact one of the most permissive assisted dying legislations in the world, comparable with laws in the Netherlands and Belgium. On February 25, the Special...Bioethics Forum Essay
On Living to 100 or More
Sometime around my mid-50’s I began to ask myself a question: how long should I want to live? My father had died at 64, my mother at 85, my various...Bioethics Forum Essay
Do Documentaries Have to Tell the Truth?
When the Tribeca Film Festival canceled its controversial screening of Vaxxed, a “documentary” (with scare-quotes) alleging a Centers for Disease Control cover-up of the debunked vaccine-autism link, it vindicated what scientists have collectively been saying...Bioethics Forum Essay
U.S. Military Medical Ethics Guidelines in Limbo
As President Barack Obama’s term comes to a conclusion, various initiatives started under his administration remain unfinished. One of these, the adoption of the recommendations of the Defense Health Board...Bioethics Forum Essay
Reframing Conscientious Care: Q&A with Mara Buchbinder
Much of the conversation about conscience in health care has focused on the ethics of physician refusal to perform procedures that they object to. However, this framework seems insufficient for...Read “Reframing Conscientious Care: Q&A with Mara Buchbinder”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Lincoln’s Promise: Congress, Veterans, and Traumatic Brain Injury
Perhaps we were naïve. Our plan was relatively simple: we would chart the legislative evolution of programs for veterans with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) to identify policy gaps for this...Read “Lincoln’s Promise: Congress, Veterans, and Traumatic Brain Injury”
Hastings Center News
Nancy Berlinger Co-Authors Palliative Care Recommendations
Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger is an author of a new policy statement on palliative care issued by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. The statement makes recommendations on...Read “Nancy Berlinger Co-Authors Palliative Care Recommendations”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Why EpiPen Prices Are No Shock
High drug prices are a fact of modern American life. They are not, however, equally high for all Americans. Their magnitude depends on whether you are un-, under-, or adequately...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Challenge of High Drug Prices in the U.S.
Drug spending in the United States increased more than 12 percent in 2014 and is projected to rise faster than overall health care spending over the next 10 years. Between...Bioethics Forum Essay
EpiPens and the Sale of Fear
On September 21, Heather Bresch, CEO of Mylan, took heat at a Congressional hearing about high EpiPen prices. EpiPens are definitely overpriced – but they are also overprescribed. An EpiPen is...Bioethics Forum Essay
Telemedicine Needs Ethical Guidelines
Telemedicine is becoming more widespread. This is care at a distance, where patient and clinician are connected by information technology that may include video, audio, and monitoring equipment linked by...Hastings Center News
Mildred Solomon on Controversial Duchenne Drug Approval
Writing in the Health Affairs Blog, Hastings Center president Mildred Solomon says that the Food and Drug Administration’s controversial decision to approve the first drug for Duchenne muscular dystrophy is...Read “Mildred Solomon on Controversial Duchenne Drug Approval”
Hastings Center News
Transgender Medicine Focus of New Publication
The November issue of the AMA Journal of Ethics is devoted to transgender health and medicine. Contributors include Elizabeth Dietz, a project manager and research assistant at The Hastings Center,...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
Public Health under the Trump Administration
The recent report by the National Center for Health Statistics showing a decline in life expectancy in the U.S. in 2015 highlights a point largely overlooked in post-election discussions about...Bioethics Forum Essay
Health Care Access for Undocumented Immigrants under the Trump Administration
Health care access is local; creating, financing, expanding, or restricting health care access for a low-income population involves local, state, and federal policies. During the Obama administration, health insurance for the...Read “Health Care Access for Undocumented Immigrants under the Trump Administration”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The 21st Century Cures Act Sparks Values Debate
On December 13th, President Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act, a bipartisan, multidimensional health research and development bill. The act allocates $4.8 billion to the National Institutes of Health...Hastings Center News
What Happens When Undocumented Immigrants Are Seriously Ill?
How do state and local health care systems care for seriously ill undocumented immigrants? This question is the focus of a collection of articles in JAMA Internal Medicine. Nancy Berlinger,...Read “What Happens When Undocumented Immigrants Are Seriously Ill?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
New Homeland Security Rules and Health Care Access for Undocumented Immigrants
On February 21, the Department of Homeland Security released new policies prioritizing deportation of undocumented immigrants. Will this policy shift affect health care access for this population of 11 million?...Read “New Homeland Security Rules and Health Care Access for Undocumented Immigrants”
Bioethics Forum Essay
A Doctor’s Dilemma: A Case of Two “Right” Answers
Imagine you are a doctor running a clinic in a primarily lower-income neighborhood, where many of your patients are recent immigrants from different parts of the world. You are granted...Bioethics Forum Essay
How “America First” Undermines Our Health
People value their health. It allows them to pursue their aims and enjoy their lives, and it contributes to their well-being. But health is not only good for particular healthy...Hastings Center News
For Medicare Coverage, What Outcomes Should Count and What Evidence Is Needed?
Why doesn’t Medicare pay unconditionally for amyloid PET imaging, a brain scan that identifies whether patients have beta amyloid plaque in their brain tissue, which may be a contributing factor...Read “For Medicare Coverage, What Outcomes Should Count and What Evidence Is Needed?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
OrthoKantics
In 2008, The President’s Council on Bioethics turned to Immanuel Kant and his deontological philosophy as a resource for deliberations on contemporary bioethical issues. The report focused on Kant’s understanding...Hastings Center News
Association of Health Care Journalists Meeting Features Hastings Center Experts
The Hastings Center teamed up with the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) to create three sessions on gene editing for its annual meeting in Orlando on April 20. In...Read “Association of Health Care Journalists Meeting Features Hastings Center Experts”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Health Reform and Competing Visions of Justice
On May 4, 2017, just over one month after abandoning a previous version of the bill, the U.S. House of Representatives voted by a 217-213 margin (with one abstention) to...Hastings Center News
Robert Wilson Charitable Trust Enables The Hastings Center to Set Priorities for Future Work on Aging
It’s unusual for a funder to recognize that large societal problems are best addressed after deep reflection and a deliberate and inclusive process of consultation and priority-setting. “But then,” says...Hastings Center News
Governance of Emerging Technology Conference Features Hastings Center Experts
Artificial intelligence, gene editing, synthetic biology – these are among the new technologies discussed at Governance of Emerging Technology 2017, organized by Arizona State University College of Law and cosponsored...Read “Governance of Emerging Technology Conference Features Hastings Center Experts”
Hastings Center News
Helping Transgender Adolescents Make Informed Decisions About Their Reproductive Care
Danielle is a 15-year-old transgender female who is about to begin hormone therapy. Her parents would like her to explore gamete cryopreservation – sperm freezing – as a means of...Read “Helping Transgender Adolescents Make Informed Decisions About Their Reproductive Care”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Score is Even
Three years ago, a small pharmaceutical company with a big agenda created a fake feminist group so that they could get a bad drug approved by the Food and Drug...Bioethics Forum Essay
Masked Marketing: Pharmaceutical Company Funding of ADHD Patient Advocacy Groups
In 1971, the United Nations passed a resolution prohibiting its member nations from advertising psychotropic drugs to the general public. More than 40 years later, this resolution has done little...Read “Masked Marketing: Pharmaceutical Company Funding of ADHD Patient Advocacy Groups”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Charlie Gard, Compassionate Use, and Single-Payer Health Care
The case of Charlie Gard continued to unfold this week as Charlie’s parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, withdrew their appeal for permission to bring him to the United States...Read “Charlie Gard, Compassionate Use, and Single-Payer Health Care”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Removing the Stigma from “Stigmatopin” to Help Curb Opioid Dependence
The magnitude of the opioid epidemic is increasing across North America, stretching its harmful reach across socioeconomic borders. Drug overdoses are currently the number one killer of Americans under the...Read “Removing the Stigma from “Stigmatopin” to Help Curb Opioid Dependence”
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Being a Good Doctor When Patients Fear Deportation: Lessons for Future Physicians
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine last March warned of the “chilling effect” of recent federal immigration policy changes on health care access for undocumented immigrants. The...Read “Being a Good Doctor When Patients Fear Deportation: Lessons for Future Physicians”
Hastings Center News
Breakthrough Cancer Treatment: Hastings Scholars Discuss Hope and Challenges in Health Affairs
The first gene therapy for cancer, approved by the Food Drug Administration in August, will transform the treatment of a particular kind of cancer in children and young adults. It’s...Bioethics Forum Essay
A Call for Medical Students to Learn the Full Story about the “Father of Gynecology”
Along with the recent public debates over Confederate memorials, there have been calls to remove or modify the statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims, called the father of gynecology in...Read “A Call for Medical Students to Learn the Full Story about the “Father of Gynecology””
Bioethics Forum Essay
When Are Organ Recipients Human Research Subjects?
Do the recipients of organ transplants have a right to know if the organs they are about to receive were part of a research study? If so, are the recipients...Hastings Center News
How Much Control Should You Have Over Your Biological Data?
When you donate a sample of blood or saliva for research purposes, is it your property? What about the genetic and other data it contains? Should you be allowed to...Read “How Much Control Should You Have Over Your Biological Data?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Medicine, Morals, and Female Genital Cutting
The arrest of Jumana Nagarwala and her colleagues, in what has become the first case to be tried under the federal law prohibiting female genital mutilation, has brought female genital...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
Cancer and Fertility: Learning from Survivors
As modern medicine improves survival odds, many young cancer patients are living long lives that bear the markings of the disease and its treatment. The side effects of chemotherapy, radiation,...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Scholar Addresses Implications of CDC Avoiding Seven Words
Vulnerable. Entitlement. Diversity. Transgender. Fetus. Evidence-based. Science-based. Last week, news outlets reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been advised to avoid using these seven words in...Read “Hastings Center Scholar Addresses Implications of CDC Avoiding Seven Words”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Improving Ethics at the Bedside
It’s one o’clock in the morning in the pediatric intensive care unit. A 16-year-old patient tells his nurse that he disagrees with the medical treatment plan that was agreed to...Bioethics Forum Essay
After Hurricane Harvey, Injustice in Houston
Hurricane Harvey dissipated in September, but much of the destruction that it wreaked on Texas and Louisiana remains. When addressing residential concerns, disaster relief officials prioritize the newly homeless over...Hastings Center News
Questions About Conscientious Objection in Health Care
In January the Department of Health and Human Services acted to increase enforcement of laws that permit doctors and other health care workers to refuse to provide services such as...Read “Questions About Conscientious Objection in Health Care”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Natural, Medical, Political Childbirth
“It felt selfish to put my baby at serious risk by pursuing a vaginal birth,” writes Kristen Terlizzi in a collection of essays published recently in Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics....Bioethics Forum Essay
Breastfeeding and Transgender Women
A transgender woman has successfully breastfed a baby. This case has been hailed as a “breakthrough” for transgender families. I will argue that being transgender is only peripherally relevant, and...Bioethics Forum Essay
Reproductive Freedom: The More Things Change . . .
An opinion piece in the New York Times, “Doctors Fail Women Who Don’t Want Children,” serves as a striking reminder that the more things seem to change, the more they...Bioethics Forum Essay
Lena Dunham’s Lesson for Doctors
In a recent essay in Vogue the actress, writer, and director Lena Dunham described her decision to have a hysterectomy at age 31 after a decade of unsuccessful attempts to...Bioethics Forum Essay
Being Poor Is a Full-Time Job
An article in the Hastings Center Report asks whether it is ethical to ration health care by inconvenience and red tape. In other words, given that all societies must ration...Hastings Center News
Documentary Series Premiere on Genetic Medicine Features Hastings Scholars
Hastings Center president Mildred Z. Solomon and director of research Josephine Johnston were featured speakers at the premiere screening of The Code, a series of three documentaries on the origins...Read “Documentary Series Premiere on Genetic Medicine Features Hastings Scholars”
Bioethics Forum Essay
“No one was listening to us.” Lessons from the Jahi McMath Case
“It was like he thought we were dirt.” This is how Jahi McMath’s grandmother, Sandra, describes having been treated by one of the doctors at the Oakland’s Children Hospital ICU....Read ““No one was listening to us.” Lessons from the Jahi McMath Case”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Organ Donation and Transplantation in the U.S.: 50 Years of Success, Strategies for Improvement
The Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, a landmark law adopted 50 years ago this summer, has provided a sound and stable legal platform on which to base an effective nationwide organ...Bioethics Forum Essay
Fentanyl at Your Door: Who are Pain Groups Advocating For?
In February, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) published a report that revealed the unsettling relationship between opioid manufacturers and pain advocacy groups. Focusing on five opioid manufacturers, Purdue, Janssen, Depomed, Insys,...Read “Fentanyl at Your Door: Who are Pain Groups Advocating For?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Evaluating Recommendations to Increase Organ Donation
While the U.S. system of organ donation and transplantation is in a state of growth for the fifth year in a row, the call for new strategies to accelerate that...Read “Evaluating Recommendations to Increase Organ Donation”
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”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Palliative Care vs. Cancer Research
The death of former first lady Barbara Bush at age 92 was noteworthy in many ways. She was by all accounts smart, sharp and funny, and a fine, helpful wife...Bioethics Forum Essay
Should Doctors Treat Family Members?
Many privileges come with having a doctor in the family: appointments squeezed into busy schedules as personal favors, a conspicuous lack of financial strain, an ability to comprehend both treatment...Bioethics Forum Essay
Is it Time to Regulate the Sale of Sugar to Minors?
In “Tackling Obesity and Disease: The Culprit Is Sugar; the Response is Legal Regulation,” published in the Hastings Center Report, Lawrence O. Gostin describes four coordinated interventions that have been...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”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Addressing Questions About DTC Genetic Tests and Privacy
The process is fairly simple. You select one of the companies that offer direct-to-consumer genetic tests; pay online; receive a neatly packed kit that contains a tube designed to collect...Read “Addressing Questions About DTC Genetic Tests and Privacy”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Trumping Drug Costs
I usually have trouble finding a good word to say for President Trump’s policy ventures, but his aim to better control out-of-pocket drug costs is worth support. Distressingly, but unsurprisingly,...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Only PhD Scientist in Congress Speaks About Truth, Politics, and Human Flourishing
At a time when facts are distorted, disregarded, and ignored in policy making and political discourse, the need in Washington for seekers and defenders of truth has perhaps never been...Read “The Only PhD Scientist in Congress Speaks About Truth, Politics, and Human Flourishing”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Shocking the Conscience: Justice Department versus the Health of Immigrant Women and Children
In April, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it would criminally prosecute migrants who had been apprehended after crossing the U.S.-Mexico. border. An immediate consequence of this announcement, explained in...Read “Shocking the Conscience: Justice Department versus the Health of Immigrant Women and Children”
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
What Are the Rules for Ethical Medication of Migrant Kids?
Reports that migrant children held by the Office of Refugee Resettlement are being drugged require an immediate and unambiguous response by the Trump administration. According to court filings, the drugs that...Read “What Are the Rules for Ethical Medication of Migrant Kids?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Addyi Rises Again
Addyi, a drug that made a splash when it was approved in the summer of 2015 as the first “female Viagra,” is back. Its rise, fall, and rise again is...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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Newspaper Op-Eds Should Disclose Authors’ Industry Ties
Earlier this month, The Seattle Times published an op-ed by Samuel Browd, medical director of Seattle Children’s Sport Concussion Program, on the risks of brain injury in youth sports. Dr. Browd...Read “Newspaper Op-Eds Should Disclose Authors’ Industry Ties”
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
Immigrant Health and the Moral Scandal of the “Public Charge” Rule
A long-anticipated policy change proposed by the Trump administration that would count the use of many federally-subsidized programs against immigrants currently eligible to use them threatens public health and would...Read “Immigrant Health and the Moral Scandal of the “Public Charge” Rule”
Bioethics Forum Essay
England’s Abortion Law Catches Up
Last month, England announced that it would allow women to take the second pill required for a medical abortion–misoprostol–at home, rather than requiring them to travel to a clinic. The...Bioethics Forum Essay
Wrongful Death Suits for Frozen Embryos: A Bad Idea
Last March, 4,000 frozen eggs and embryos were lost at University Hospitals Fertility Center in Cleveland when the temperature in cryogenic tanks spiked due to human error. Officials at University...Hastings Center News
New Project: Countering the Rising Threats to Immigrant Health
Immigrants and their families in the United States and migrants who seek asylum in this country face accelerating threats and harms to their health because of the Trump administration’s immigration priorities. A...Read “New Project: Countering the Rising Threats to Immigrant Health”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Let the Sun Shine into the Medical Ivory Tower
In 2012, I coauthored a case report about the successful use of dietary supplements in treating a case of male infertility in the American Family Physician. Before it was published,...Hastings Center News
Debating Modern Medical Technologies: The Politics of Safety, Effectiveness, and Patient Access
Does a new medicine or diagnostic test work? Is it safe? Should the government approve it and insurers pay for it? The answers are not as straightforward as they may...Bioethics Forum Essay
What I Practice: Democratic Medicine
When people ask me what kind of medicine I practice, I most often say family medicine. Now, however, I am also apt to say I practice “democratic medicine.” What is...Hastings Center News
The Hastings Center Celebrates Outstanding Journalists
Three journalists received The Hastings Center Awards for Excellence in Journalism on Ethics and Reprogenetics. The awards were presented at an event in New York City on December 6 that...Read “The Hastings Center Celebrates Outstanding Journalists”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Three Ethical Reasons for Vaccinating your Children
Across the country, billboards are popping up suggesting that vaccines can kill children, when the science behind vaccination is crystal clear – vaccinations are extremely safe. Researchers who study the beliefs of anti-vaxxers have found many...Bioethics Forum Essay
Should We Edit the Human Germline? Is Consensus Possible or Even Desirable?
I started writing this on my way back to New York from the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, held in Hong Kong November 27 to 29, where the...Read “Should We Edit the Human Germline? Is Consensus Possible or Even Desirable?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Staying in Their Lane: Health Professionals Must Address Gun Violence
In the wake of the recent Twitter fight between the National Rifle Association and U.S. physician groups over whether doctors should speak out about firearm policy issues, we argue that...Read “Staying in Their Lane: Health Professionals Must Address Gun Violence”
Hastings Center News
New York City Initiative to Cover the Uninsured Reflects Hastings Research, Recommendations
On May 7, New York City officials unveiled details of NYC Care, a new program in the nation’s largest public health system that aims to improve health care access for...Read “New York City Initiative to Cover the Uninsured Reflects Hastings Research, Recommendations”
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?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
What Dr. Seuss Saw at the Golden Years Clinic
“Improving patient experience” has become the mantra of many health care facilities in a highly competitive and regulated environment. But just what is it about the patient experience that needs...Hastings Center News
Should Patients Be Considered Consumers? Hastings Scholars Say, No.
There is broad support for building health care systems that are patient centered, seen as a means of improving health outcomes and as morally worthy in itself. But the concept...Read “Should Patients Be Considered Consumers? Hastings Scholars Say, No.”
Hastings Center News
Genomics Enters the Clinic: What Should Savvy Consumers Know?
Genetics is finally being integrated into the clinic: cancer patients are having their cancer’s genome sequenced, fertility patients are having their embryos tested, and parents are being offered sequencing of their newborn babies.Read “Genomics Enters the Clinic: What Should Savvy Consumers Know?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Religion, Suffering, and the Physician’s Role
Should religion play a role in a doctor's care of seriously ill patients? The author, a hematologist/oncologist who teaches Jewish medical ethics, writes: "A physician's outlook may be shaped by religious standards without having to impose it on the patient."Hastings Center News
Dementia and the Ethics of Choosing When to Die
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
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
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
Does Genetic Testing Pose Psychosocial Risks?
Bioethics Forum Essay
The AMA’s Apology: What’s the Benefit?
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Public Charge Rule Is a Eugenic Policy
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center’s Rosemary Gibson Honored for Enhancing Health Care Quality
Read “Hastings Center’s Rosemary Gibson Honored for Enhancing Health Care Quality”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Justice for Survivors of Sexual Assault
Many survivors of sexual assault are not receiving the justice they deserve. For one thing, an estimated hundreds of thousands of rape kits are left unused, reducing the odds that the perpetrators will be identified and prosecuted. When rape kits are used, many survivors are flooded with bills, in some cases for many years. This system is unethical and illegal.Bioethics Forum Essay
Diving Deeper into Amazon Alexa’s HIPAA Compliance
Amazon.com made waves in health care when it announced that its Alexa Skills Kit, a suite of tools for building voice programs, would be HIPAA compliant. Using the Alexa Skills Kit, companies could build voice experiences for Amazon Echo devices that communicate personal health information with patients. Alexa’s various roles in health care stand to confuse (or potentially exploit) users.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
New Project Seeks to Build Diverse Participation in Precision Medicine Research
The Hastings Center is co-leading a new project to examine recruitment and retention of participants the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program, an unprecedented initiative to collect genetic and other health-related data from at least one million people living in the United States. This project will focus on a research site that is a health center that serves primarily Latino and African American patients -- groups historically underrepresented in research – to identify strategies to build engagement.Read “New Project Seeks to Build Diverse Participation in Precision Medicine Research”
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.Hastings Center News
Helping Seriously Ill Patients Access “Last Resort” Medicines
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.Read “Helping Seriously Ill Patients Access “Last Resort” Medicines”
Hastings Center News
Expert in Artificial Intelligence Named Hastings Center Senior Advisor
Read “Expert in Artificial Intelligence Named Hastings Center Senior Advisor”
Bioethics Forum Essay
To Restore Humanity in Health Care, Address Clinician Burnout
Health care in America is at a critical juncture. The number of people who need it continues to grow and costs have skyrocketed. But instead of being a beacon of healing, many health care organizations are beleaguered and overwhelmed. Burnout has become a rallying cry for nurses and doctors because it impedes their ability to uphold the foundational values of their professions and to serve in accordance with them. These realities have eroded the fundamental humanity of health care.Read “To Restore Humanity in Health Care, Address Clinician Burnout”
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
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
Deciding When Enough is Enough in Providing Life-Sustaining Treatment for a Child
Tinslee Lewis, a critically ill 1-year-old girl born with a rare heart defect and severe lung disease, has spent her entire life in the intensive care unit at Cook Children’s Hospital in Texas and undergone multiple surgeries in attempts to save her life. Tinslee’s care team has determined that she has no chance for any meaningful survival and that ongoing intensive care is harmful and causing her undue suffering. They recommend withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, against the parent’s wishes. Tinslee’s fate is being debated in court.Read “Deciding When Enough is Enough in Providing Life-Sustaining Treatment for a Child”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Health Care for Obesity and Eating Disorders: What Needs to Change
The theme of National Eating Disorder Awareness (NEDA) week , “Come as you are: Hindsight is 20-20,” is designed to encourage those recovering from eating disorders to reflect on their journeys towards body acceptance. It also affords doctors and other health professionals an opportunity to evaluate how well they are doing to help patients reach this goal.Read “Health Care for Obesity and Eating Disorders: What Needs to Change”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Coronavirus Response Is Insufficient for Vulnerable New Yorkers
Read “Coronavirus Response Is Insufficient for Vulnerable New Yorkers”
Hastings Center News
The Hastings Center Produces Guidance for Ethical Practice in Responding to COVID-19
The Hastings Center has developed a resource for health care institutions and institutional ethics services to support leadership and practice during the novel coronavirus public health emergency and in the care of patients with COVID-19.The Hastings Center convened an expert advisory group to meet the need for a practical resource to support institutional preparedness and supplement public health and clinical practice guidance on COVID-19.Read “The Hastings Center Produces Guidance for Ethical Practice in Responding to COVID-19”
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
We Need International Medical Graduates to Help Fight Covid-19. Immigration Policies Keep Them Away
Bioethics Forum Essay
Crowdfunding for Covid-Related Needs: Unfair and Inadequate
One-third of all new GoFundMe campaigns in the United States are for COVID-19-related needs. This shows where we have failed as a society. It is a makeshift response to institutional failures and not a fair or sustainable solution to crises.Read “Crowdfunding for Covid-Related Needs: Unfair and Inadequate”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Disabusing the Disability Critique of the New York State Task Force Report on Ventilator Allocation
I am a member of the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law and helped write its 2015 guidelines on the allocation of ventilators during a public health emergency. The position outlined by the Task Force report has been a point of confusion in the media. I don't believe that the Task Force recommendations discriminate against people with disabilities.Bioethics Forum Essay
Do New York State’s Ventilator Allocation Guidelines Place Chronic Ventilator Users at Risk? Clarification Needed
There is a lack of clarity about the New York State Task Force guidelines on ventilator allocation. I believe disability rights concerns regarding the recommendations on chronic ventilator users are well-founded. This lack of clarity may cost lives.Bioethics Forum Essay
New York State Task Force on Life and the Law Ventilator Allocation Guidelines: How Our Views on Disability Evolved
The views of the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law on ventilator-dependent chronic care patients evolved over the years. Here's how, and why.Bioethics Forum Essay
Why I Support Age-Related Rationing of Ventilators for Covid-19 Patients
As a 71-year-old bioethicist, I consider rationing mechanical ventilation based on age to be one morally relevant criterion during the Covid-19 pandemic.Read “Why I Support Age-Related Rationing of Ventilators for Covid-19 Patients”
Bioethics Forum Essay
When It Comes to Rationing, Disability Rights Law Prohibits More than Prejudice
This week, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights resolved one of many civil rights complaints alleging discrimination on the basis of disability–the first instance of federal intervention to enforce civil rights laws in rationing protocols since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis. But more work is needed to protect patients with disabilities in the allocation of scarce medical resources.Read “When It Comes to Rationing, Disability Rights Law Prohibits More than Prejudice”
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
The Covid Threat No One Is Talking About: Wearing Scrubs in Public
The Covid-19 outbreak has forced health care providers, administrative officials, and the general public to each play their part in doing no harm to others. It may come as a surprise to many people, but health care workers may unknowingly spread Covid-19 in their communities simply by wearing scrubs in public.Read “The Covid Threat No One Is Talking About: Wearing Scrubs in Public”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Sustaining Clinical Empathy During the Pandemic
As Covid-19 continues to spread throughout the United States, doctors, nurses, and oth-er clinicians are facing unmistakable tragedies. But something less perceptible is afoot. Empathy in medicine is under siege.Bioethics Forum Essay
Why Health Care Workers Should Receive Priority Care for Covid-19
The Covid-19 pandemic has imposed tremendous risk on doctors, nurses, and other health care workers not seen in a century. It is time to reconsider prioritization of health care workers’ access to scare critical resources. Historically, for multiple reasons, health care workers have not been prioritized for access to medical care during a pandemic. However, given the unprecedented circumstances surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, it is justifiable to prioritize health care workers when all else is equal between two patients.Read “Why Health Care Workers Should Receive Priority Care for Covid-19”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Lessons from Covid-19: Why Treating Sick Patients is Bad Business for Hospitals
Hospitals in the United States are losing money taking care of patients with Covid-19. The pandemic casts a harsh spotlight on the misallocation of health care resources in the U.S.Read “Lessons from Covid-19: Why Treating Sick Patients is Bad Business for Hospitals”
Bioethics Forum Essay
After the Surge: Prioritizing the Backlog of Delayed Hospital Procedures
The rewards of social distancing are beginning to accrue in former hotspots such as Seattle, the New York metropolitan area, and the San Francisco Bay Area, where the number of new Covid-19 cases requiring hospitalization is declining. Assuming the rewards hold in the face of pressures to reopen the economy, hospitals will now face challenges of reopening their own nonpandemic services for patients whose elective surgeries and other procedures were postponed. Which patients should get priority?Read “After the Surge: Prioritizing the Backlog of Delayed Hospital Procedures”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Cracks in the System: Lessons Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic
The United States leads the world in coronavirus cases and deaths. Although many people have called out the inadequacies of our health care system, Covid-19 has exposed the most significant shortcomings. The need for change can no longer be ignored. Here are three lessons from this pandemic that should be leveraged for change.Read “Cracks in the System: Lessons Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic”
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
We Can’t Forget the Nation’s Other Epidemic
Covid isn’t merely overshadowing the drug overdose crisis—it’s directly worsening it.Bioethics Forum Essay
Fair Compensation for Rare Vaccine Harms
As multiple Covid vaccine candidates enter clinical trials and hopefully move closer to approval, one important unanswered question is how to compensate the rare cases of serious vaccine harm.Bioethics Forum Essay
Black Women Can’t Breathe
Years before George Floyd begged to be released from under the knee of Officer Derek Chauvin, Barbara Dawson, a 57-year-old Black woman, died begging a police officer, John Tadlock, not to remove her oxygen mask. Her death occurred right outside the Calhoun Liberty Hospital in Blountstown, Florida, shortly before Christmas in 2015.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
Caring for My First Neo-Nazi Patient
How could I, the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors, be obligated to provide not just satisfactory, but exceptional care to such a morally repugnant character?Bioethics Forum Essay
A Historic Intersex Awareness Day
This year’s Intersex Awareness Day, October 26, marks a historic pivot. Last week, Boston Children’s Hospital revealed that its physicians would no longer perform certain nonconsensual infant genital surgeries on babies born with atypical genitals. They join the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, which made a similar announcement in July and even apologized to its former intersex patients. Intersex advocates have been working toward this goal for decades.Hastings Center News
New Project: Building an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health Care
Read “New Project: Building an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health Care”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethics of Emergency Use Authorization During the Pandemic
The Food and Drug Administration's rigorous guidance for an emergency use authorization of a Covid vaccine was met by resistance from the White House, since some of the terms would make it virtually impossible to issue a vaccine-related emergency authorization before Election Day. Understanding the ethical dimensions of issuing it for a vaccine can provide clarity on the necessity of the FDA’s stringent guidelines.Read “Ethics of Emergency Use Authorization During the Pandemic”
Hastings Center News
Can AI Reduce Inequity and Improve Empathy in Medicine? A Conversation Between Eric Topol and Mildred Solomon
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Scholar on How Some Countries Control Health Spending
Although the U.S. has the highest health care prices in the world, the specific mechanisms commonly used by other countries to set and update prices are often overlooked, with a...Read “Hastings Center Scholar on How Some Countries Control Health Spending”
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.Bioethics Forum Essay
The Bioethics of Built Health Care Spaces
Around the world, an alarming percentage of Covid-19 deaths occurred in long-term care facilities. Some of these deaths may have been avoided by changes in design. It's time that bioethicists to take a closer look at the built health care environment.Page
Advancing Social Justice, Health Equity, and Community
TRANSCRIPT: February 9, 2021 Hello, good afternoon. If you’re on the East Coast and welcome to the annual Daniel Callahan lecture, advancing social justice, health, equity and Community. We are...Read “Advancing Social Justice, Health Equity, and Community”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Beyond “Just Sign Here”–A New Model of Consent for Primary Care
The practice of informed consent in clinical medicine is broken. Globally, the process varies widely, and even in the United States informed consent looks little like the formal, legal, autonomy-based...Read “Beyond “Just Sign Here”–A New Model of Consent for Primary Care”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethical Challenges in Discharge Planning
Millions of patients are discharged from hospitals each year, but the individual and systemic forces that shape discharge planning and care transitions frequently lead to “failures that compromise patient health and well-being.”Hastings Center News
Considering the Potential and Pitfalls of “Dr. GPT-3” in a Clinic Near You
Artificial intelligence natural language computer applications are becoming increasingly sophisticated, raising the possibility that they could assume a greater role in health care, including interacting with patients. But before these...Read “Considering the Potential and Pitfalls of “Dr. GPT-3” in a Clinic Near You”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Vaccine Mandates for Health Care Workers Raise Several Ethical Dilemmas
The moral justification for mandating covid vaccination for health care workers is clear. But what happens if some health care workers still refuse to be vaccinated, and there aren't enough vaccinated staff to care for all the patients in a hospital?Read “Vaccine Mandates for Health Care Workers Raise Several Ethical Dilemmas”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Who Will Be There to Care If There Are No More Nurses?
The pandemic has laid bare the significant shortcomings of a health system rooted in an unsustainable financial model that exploits the physical and emotional labor of its nurses.Read “Who Will Be There to Care If There Are No More Nurses?”
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.Page
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Omicron, the Legacy of Renée Fox, and the Uncertain Practice of Medicine
Like the pandemic, uncertainty, growing confidence, and the return of doubt come in waves. The Omicron variant is just the latest twist in this plot.Read “Omicron, the Legacy of Renée Fox, and the Uncertain Practice of Medicine”
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””
Page
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”
Page
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...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Report Commentary Helps Catalyze Connecticut Action Against Unconsented Intimate Medical Exams
A national survey, described in an essay in the Hastings Center Report, found a widespread practice, often for medical student teaching purposes, of doing pelvic and rectal exams in unconscious...Bioethics Forum Essay
DACA at 10: More, Please
DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, has been with us for 10 years. Granting a work permit and a renewable two-year stay of deportation to undocumented youth who have grown up in the United States turned out to have enormous benefits for them and for our nation.Hastings Center News
If Not Now, Then When? Taking Disability Seriously in Bioethics
The impression of bioethicists as “dangerous” has been a theme in the disability movement for decades. Is it outdated? An article in the Hastings Center Report argues that ableism and...Read “If Not Now, Then When? Taking Disability Seriously in Bioethics”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Mark Cuban’s Innovative Pharmacy: A Band-Aid on Drug Prices
Billionaire Mark Cuban and physician Alex Oshmyansky recently launched the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company (MCCPDC), an online pharmacy that sells generic prescription medicines at significantly lower prices than other sources. But the acclaim for the pharmacy may eclipse attention to the longstanding structural problems of the pharmaceutical industry and MCCPDC’s role in it.Read “Mark Cuban’s Innovative Pharmacy: A Band-Aid on Drug Prices”
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
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”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Well, There’s Always the Zoo
Our patient, weighing over 600 lbs., was above the weight limit of our hospital system’s scanner tables and those of all the other major medical centers that we called in our large city. What to do next? Our radiology department’s answer was, “Well, there’s always the zoo.”Hastings Center News
Health Care Professionals’ Burnout During Covid
Frontline physicians who cared for Covid-19 patients during the first wave of the pandemic in New York City and New Orleans reported multiple factors that contributed to their occupational stress...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Cure for Politicized Pediatric Gender Care
Children and adolescents diagnosed with gender dysphoria receive radically different treatments depending on where they live. With intense politicization of pediatric gender medicine, the U.S. needs a systematic review of the evidence for different care options.Bioethics Forum Essay
Pediatric Gender Care: Absence of Evidence Is Not Absence of Efficacy
In “The Cure for Politicized Pediatric Gender Care,” Moti Gorin argues that a U.S.-based systematic review, conducted by a trusted major medical organization such as the National Institutes of Health or the National Academy of Medicine, is needed to develop consistent standards for pediatric gender care. While the intent behind his call is well-intended, it is based on a flawed premise.Read “Pediatric Gender Care: Absence of Evidence Is Not Absence of Efficacy”
Hastings Center News
New Recommendations Address Crisis of Physician Stress
A new set of 12 recommendations for hospitals and health care institutions addresses moral stress in clinical practice and the ways that it impedes good care. The recommendations for hospital...Read “New Recommendations Address Crisis of Physician Stress”
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...Hastings Center News
Three Nurses Recognized for Outstanding End-of-Life Care
The Hastings Center and The Cunniff-Dixon Foundation are pleased to announce the 2023 recipients of The Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Nursing Awards, which honor nurses for outstanding care provided to patients...Read “Three Nurses Recognized for Outstanding End-of-Life Care”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Bioethicists and Health Care Institutions Must Act Against Florida’s Anti-Immigrant Law
Florida’s new anti-immigrant law, SB 1718, has escaped widespread notice, despite the way it will undermine the mission—and core identity--of not-for-profit hospitals as caring institutions that promote the health of the community. Bioethics and health care institutions must take action.Read “Bioethicists and Health Care Institutions Must Act Against Florida’s Anti-Immigrant Law”
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
My Mom’s Myeloma and the Fire-Breathing Chimaera
Just one month ago, my mom received an intravenous infusion of CAR T-cells, which have become mythical creatures in my imagination.Bioethics Forum Essay
Should Your Wedding Plans Include Plasma Donation?
When I said “yes!” to my partner’s proposal last spring and changed my Facebook relationship status to engaged, I expected targeted advertisements for wedding dresses, flowers, and photographers. What I did not expect were ads to donate my plasma to help pay for my wedding.Bioethics Forum Essay
The Genetics of Obesity: A New Narrative or the Same Old Story?
It seems to me a kind of magical thinking to assume that explaining the genetic causes of obesity will reduce stigma when that new explanation is lodged firmly within a broader project of treating, preventing, or curing fatness. Today, drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and now Zepbound are the favored medical solution.Read “The Genetics of Obesity: A New Narrative or the Same Old Story?”
Hastings Center News
Rebuilding Trust in Health Care and Science
While confidence in many institutions has been declining for decades, the Covid-19 pandemic exposed the breakdown in trust in health care and science. A new Hastings Center special report on...Bioethics Forum Essay
In the Shadow of War: Health Conditions in the Za’atari Refugee Camp
While working as a medical volunteer in the clinic at the edge of the refugee camp, I quickly realized I was in a clinical environment I had never seen before. I was unprepared for the sheer scale of medical needs among the refugees I was there to serve, and for what resource scarcity meant under these conditions.Read “In the Shadow of War: Health Conditions in the Za’atari Refugee Camp”
Hastings Center News
AI Code of Conduct Draft is Released
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;...Bioethics Forum Essay
Ending Medical Gaslighting Requires More than Self-Empowerment
Patients who are members of marginalized groups—women, Black people, trans people, elderly people, disabled people—are often dismissed, minimized, or altogether ignored by health care professionals. Over time, this can lead to gaslighting in which patients question their thoughts, feelings, symptoms, even themselves.Read “Ending Medical Gaslighting Requires More than Self-Empowerment”
Bioethics Forum Essay
What Is Preventable About Obesity?
The suggestion that obesity is a preventable disease has been weighing heavily on my mind ever since I read a recent article in the Hastings Center Report. The article claims to focus on “ethical, policy, and public health concerns” related to anti-obesity medications, but there is a strong undercurrent of bias throughout. As an endocrinologist who specializes in medical weight management, my clinical experience informs my understanding that obesity is almost never entirely preventable, but bias against those with obesity certainly is.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”
Bioethics Forum Essay
To Make America Healthy Again, Stop Divesting from Science
Proposed cuts to federal research funding and attacks on universities imperil the longstanding global leadership of the United States in scientific and medical discoveries and raise profound bioethical concerns.Read “To Make America Healthy Again, Stop Divesting from Science”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Budget Bill’s Hidden Health Crisis
The budget bill adopted by the House of Representatives on May 22 is not so much a fiscal blueprint as a manifesto in policy retrenchment. Behind its rhetoric of “restraint”...
