Bioethics Forum Essay
Reasonable Regulation of Surrogate Motherhood
This month France’s highest court granted legal recognition to children born to surrogates. Previously, surrogate children were deprived of any legal connection to their parents, or any civil status in...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
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
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
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
New York City’s Innovative Approach to Helping Unaccompanied Minors
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced a plan to connect unaccompanied minors who have arrived in the city from Central America with public education and health care through the...Read “New York City’s Innovative Approach to Helping Unaccompanied Minors”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Responding to Ebola: Retrofitting Governance Systems
In a recent New York Times op-ed, David Brooks observes that governance, in the form of multilateral organizing, is missing from the response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Unfortunately, global...Bioethics Forum Essay
Responding to Ebola: Organizational Ethics, Frontline Perspectives
Beyond crucial questions of fair access to scarce supplies of the experimental drug ZMapp and to other potentially effective drugs to treat Ebola, commentators from bioethics, public health, journalism, and...Read “Responding to Ebola: Organizational Ethics, Frontline Perspectives”
Bioethics Forum Essay
FDA Proposal for Regulating Laboratory Diagnostics Could Improve Patient Care
Wendy Chung’s commentary last month about the FDA’s proposed draft guidance for the regulation of laboratory-developed tests (LDTs) is heavily critical of the agency’s plans. Professor Chung argues that the FDA’s involvement...Read “FDA Proposal for Regulating Laboratory Diagnostics Could Improve Patient Care”
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
What Do We Owe to Child Migrants?
From October 1, 2013, through June 15, 2014, more than 52,000 child migrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in South Texas, overwhelming the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland...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
How Bioethicists Can Help Reduce Global Health Inequities
The state of global health is a major concern. Despite advances in medicine and medical care and massive growth of the global economy, health in the world is characterized by...Read “How Bioethicists Can Help Reduce Global Health Inequities”
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
“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
Bloomberg, Nannying, and the Symbolic Value of Food Choice
I mostly agree with Lawrence Gostin’s paean to outgoing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the Hastings Center Report. Like Gostin, I see Bloomberg as a public health innovator...Read “Bloomberg, Nannying, and the Symbolic Value of Food Choice”
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
Why Health Plan Cancellations Do Not Mean Failure for ACA
On November 14, President Obama announced that he would delay by one year the implementation of requirements imposed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act(ACA) that would have led...Read “Why Health Plan Cancellations Do Not Mean Failure for ACA”
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
“Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function” – Reason to Help, or Blame, the Poor?
“’The lower the caste,’ said Mr. Foster, ‘the shorter the oxygen.’ The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton.” In Brave New World cognitive ability is carefully and intentionally...Read ““Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function” – Reason to Help, or Blame, the Poor?”
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
After Banning Torture, Psychology Association at a Crossroads
The American Psychological Association (APA) voted at its 2015 meeting to ban psychologists from participating in national security interrogation programs, including torture. The policy change was in response to the public outcry...Read “After Banning Torture, Psychology Association at a Crossroads”
Bioethics Forum Essay
What Can Plato Teach Us About the Health Insurance Mandate?
As any philosopher worth his or her salt can tell you, health insurance is not among the array of topics in Plato’s corpus. Even so, a lesson on citizenship from...Read “What Can Plato Teach Us About the Health Insurance Mandate?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Hazards of Fast Science
A recent editorial in Nature lauds the U.S. government for its efforts to promote open communication between government scientists and journalists, but it condemns the Canadian government for its opposing efforts to...Bioethics Forum Essay
Pink Ribbons, Wire Hangers, and the Politics of Women’s Health
“Pink is the new wire hanger.” In the flurry of tweets that followed in the wake of the debacle between Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood, this one was...Read “Pink Ribbons, Wire Hangers, and the Politics of Women’s Health”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Health Workers as Pawns of Warfare
Last week, NPR reported a major humanitarian group’s decision to stop treating patients from detention centers in Misrata, Libya. According tothe report,“torture was so rampant that some detainees were brought...Bioethics Forum Essay
Medicine as a Weapon in Syria and Beyond
A recent editorial in The Lancet issued a dire warning to the international medical community: medicine is a weapon of war in Syria. It is just the latest in a series of...Bioethics Forum Essay
A Lesson from the Contraception Coverage Uproar? Rethink Employer-Based Insurance
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’re now well aware of the otherhealth care mandate. The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover “preventative health...Read “A Lesson from the Contraception Coverage Uproar? Rethink Employer-Based Insurance”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Justified Restrictions on Religious Freedom
The Obama administration’s decision regarding Catholic institutions and coverage for reproductive health has stirred up a firestorm of claims that the policy restricts religious freedom. That’s true: the policy does restrict...Bioethics Forum Essay
Obama’s Unspoken Words About Health Reform and Values
Many in the health policy world worried when President Obama made only passing reference to health care in his State of the Union Address — only two mentions of the...Read “Obama’s Unspoken Words About Health Reform and Values”
Bioethics Forum Essay
It’s Not Just the Economy, Stupid
Despite the persistent focus on economic growth, jobs, and global competition in the Republican presidential primaries, many social issues with significant bioethics implications are also at stake in November’s election....Bioethics Forum Essay
The Supreme Court and Health Care Access for Undocumented Immigrants
The Supreme Court announced that it will hear a legal challenge to President Obama’s 2014 executive action to protect an estimated five million undocumented immigrants from deportation and permit them to work...Read “The Supreme Court and Health Care Access for Undocumented Immigrants”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Right to Try Laws and the Power of Stories
I said that in focusing on abstract science and policy arguments against right to try laws, experts (and here I meant to include ethics experts) have neglected the power of...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Federal Marriage Amendment and the New One Drop of Blood Rule
As anti-miscegenation laws took hold in an effort to stop blacks and whites from marrying, by necessity courts had to start deciding who counted as white or black. The standard...Read “The Federal Marriage Amendment and the New One Drop of Blood Rule”
Bioethics Forum Essay
When HIPAA Hurts
Ever since HIPAA went into effect and I’ve been signing that form over and over at my doctors’ offices, attesting to my knowledge of the law, I’ve been feeling I...Bioethics Forum Essay
The American Medical Association’s Apology in Context: The Need for Restoration
The AMA’s recent apology to black physicians marks another moral milestone in white America’s ritualized confession of its racist past, standing alongside President Clinton’s 1997 apology to the survivors of...Read “The American Medical Association’s Apology in Context: The Need for Restoration”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Good of the Body
The December 2015 United Nations meeting on climate change was an historic moment for global efforts to reduce harmful carbon emissions. While it gained the agreement about the future good...Hastings Center News
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”
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Scholars Appointed to White House Committee
Hastings Center scholars Michael Gusmano and Nancy Berlinger have been named to a bioethics steering committee for a new White House initiative to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and care of...Read “Hastings Center Scholars Appointed to White House Committee”
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
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
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
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Morally Indefensible Health Care Bills
There is a broad and deep moral conviction that health care should be distributed according to genuine need and not left to the cold mercy of pure market forces or the logic of actuarial fairness. Unfortunately, the proposed American Health Care Act (AHCA), passed last week in the House of Representatives, and other legislation threaten to undermine that moral commitment.Bioethics Forum Essay
When Pat and Bob Nearly Saved Health Care Reform: A Lesson in Senatorial Bedside Manner
With Senator John McCain’s heroic return and Vice President Mike Pence’s tie-breaking vote on a health care bill July 25, Senate Republicans managed to cobble together 51 votes simply to agree to debate...Read “When Pat and Bob Nearly Saved Health Care Reform: A Lesson in Senatorial Bedside Manner”
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
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...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
A Single-Payer Bubble?
In an earlier piece, “Trumping Drug Costs,” I looked at out-of-pocket costs as the pivotal issue with drugs. They can be a particularly heavy burden on the elderly, taking money...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”
Hastings Center News
Debating Modern Medical Technologies: The Politics of Safety, Effectiveness, and Patient Access
Does a new medicine or diagnostic test work? Is it safe? Should the government approve it and insurers pay for it? The answers are not as straightforward as they may...Hastings Center News
New 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”
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
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
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
Hacking Ventilators in a Pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to test and occasionally overwhelm health care institutions. Many practitioners may face the ethically challenging scenario of having to ration ventilators while triaging patients in “crisis care.” Ventilator shortages have led to innovative ventilator design “hacks.” Are these improvised ventilators ethical?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”
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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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Should the FDA Have Approved the New Alzheimer’s Drug?
Should Patients Take It? Monday, July 12, 2021 The Food and Drug Administration’s accelerated approval of a new Alzheimer’s drug has created a firestorm of praise and outrage. Dissenters include...Read “Should the FDA Have Approved the New Alzheimer’s Drug?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
New Regulation for Organ Procurement Will Improve Equity and Save Lives
In the more than 35 years since federal legislation created organ procurement organizations (OPOs) to recover organs from deceased donors for transplantation, there has been a disparity in their performance,...Read “New Regulation for Organ Procurement Will Improve Equity and Save Lives”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Should Covid Vaccination Status Be Used to Make Triage Decisions?
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to strain health systems’ capacity to provide adequate care for critically ill patients, should patients’ vaccination status be considered in making triage decisions? This question sparked debate recently after the leak of an internal memo of the North Texas Mass Critical Care Guideline Task Force that proposed using patients’ Covid-19 vaccination status as a factor to assign intensive care beds.Read “Should Covid Vaccination Status Be Used to Make Triage Decisions?”
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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
Health Equity Summit Recap
The Hastings Center and the Association of American Medical Colleges Center for Health Justice convened a two-day health equity summit called “Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities” on January 19...Hastings Center News
A “Breakdown in Humanity”
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson last month told an audience of over 2,600 people at the health equity summit co-convened by The Hastings Center that one of the consistent outcomes...Hastings Center News
The Burglar at Midnight
David Williams, an internationally recognized Harvard scholar, showed how segregation is a driver of differences in income and education and how these racial inequities matter for life and health. He...Hastings Center News
To Improve Health Equity, Look at Politics
Daniel Dawes, a key figure in shaping the Affordable Care Act, urged the audience at last month’s health care summit to look upstream and focus on the political and structural...Hastings Center News
Prioritize Children and Payments to Improve Health Equity
There is no single policy solution to advancing health equity, but we must prioritize children, said Paula Lantz, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, at the...Read “Prioritize Children and Payments to Improve Health Equity”
Hastings Center News
Improving Access Key to Improving Health Equity
Improving access to health care is critical to improving health equity, stated health care leaders at a panel at the health equity summit sponsored by The Hastings Center earlier this...Hastings Center News
“Hard to Hear” About Racism in Medical Education
“You have to embed structural practices in health professions education to dismantle racism in medicine,“ said Priya Garg, associate dean of medical education at Boston University School of Medicine, at...Hastings Center News
Issue Brief: Equitable Access to Precision Medicine
A new issue brief from The Hastings Center, “Strategies to Support Equitable Access to Precision Medicine for All of Us Participants from Federally Qualified Health Centers,” presents policy recommendations to mitigate disparities in access to appropriate medical follow-up after the return of genetic findings.Page
Justice in Health: Equipping Bioethics to Improve Policy and Practice
Project Director: Josephine Johnston Funder: The Greenwall Foundation This project was a collaboration between an independent antiracism task force of bioethicists from across the United States and The Hastings Center, as part...Read “Justice in Health: Equipping Bioethics to Improve Policy and Practice”
From Bioethics Briefings
Racism and Health Equity
Framing the Issue Racism has been declared a threat to public health by public health and medical organizations like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Medical...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”
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”
Bioethics Forum Essay
When Bioethics is Like Surfing: Changing Federal Policy
I was honored (and honestly a bit surprised) to play a pivotal role in a recent federal milestone for patients’ rights. On April 1, the Department of Health and Human...Read “When Bioethics is Like Surfing: Changing Federal Policy”
Bioethics Forum Essay
After the Election, Our Aging Society Will Still Need Care Policy
After the election, the care needs of our aging society will continue to be met by families showing up, day after day. Whether or not our public officials decide to imagine otherwise and commit themselves to policy changes that could prove highly popular, bioethics needs to keep its eyes on the caregivers.Read “After the Election, Our Aging Society Will Still Need Care Policy”
