History is informative in considering how bioethicists should respond to serious new threats to public health and well-being.

Today’s wars kill far more civilians than soldiers. Bioethics must address war not just as an individual tragedy but as a public health disaster.

In a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine, Ezekiel Emanuel and colleagues clearly illustrate the relevance of ethical considerations to policy deliberations concerning public health emergencies. But do ethicists belong at the table?

Given the well-known environmental and health risks of oil and gas drilling, oil and gas giants that enter developing nations routinely offset these risks with charitable investments. Are these investments sufficient? Do the funds go where they are needed? Answering this question raises ethical issues that need greater attention.

In rural Virginia, where I live, there is strong support for the right to own and carry guns. For more than a decade, I have shared public health, mental health, and other scientific findings with the leadership of a statewide Second Amendment rights advocacy group, especially regarding the leading number of deaths by firearms: suicide. We do not agree on what firearms laws and policies might be or do to prevent suicides, but we have sustained our conversations and respectfully learned from each other’s point of view. Such conversations are hard to have.

This week, the United States saw two momentous public health events: one million deaths attributed to Covid and the 198th mass shooting of the year. Both the pandemic and gun shootings are threats to public health that are not being adequately addressed.

The American myth of rugged individualism, which often means “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps,” is outdated, was never completely accurate. It is on full display during the coronavirus pandemic, contributing to cases and deaths.

The C.D.C.'s latest policy guidance that people who have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus virus no longer need to wear face masks indoors gets the science right, but policymaking wrong.

It was especially disappointing to read about Bruce Springsteen’s recent arrest for suspicion of driving while intoxicated (DWI). Here's hoping the famous rocker will use his arrest to refocus attention on a risky and dangerous behavior that is thoroughly preventable.

Science has replaced populism in the White House. For the first time, the president's science advisor will be elevated to cabinet rank. There are other good omens, as well.

Many people are deeply interested in the political process and awash in relevant information., but nevertheless often grossly misinformed, holding confident but unfounded opinions at odds with widely accessible evidence The recent riot at Capitol Hill is just one illustration–albeit a horrifying one–of such misinformation and its potential consequences. The anti-vaccine movement is another example.

One of the most surprising aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic for those of us who teach the history of public health is how unwilling many Americans have been to adopt health measures to protect others. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, tens of millions of Americans traveled, despite the fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged them to stay home and the overall death rate from the coronavirus is approaching 300,000. Should recent events make us revisit aspects of the history of public health? And how can these stories inform future public health efforts during pandemics?

Physicians have been vocal in condemning the anti-lockdown protests while endorsing and even participating in the Black Lives Matter protests. This has led to criticism of the medical community for being inconsistent and hypocritical. What does an ethical analysis reveal?

As more workplaces open up, a seldom-used legal action is being taken against employers charged with inadequately protecting employees from the coronavirus: public nuisance lawsuits.

Before there was the Covid-19 pandemic, there was Pandemic. This tabletop game, in which players collaborate to fight disease outbreaks, debuted in 2007. Expansions feature weaponized pathogens, historic pandemics, zoonotic diseases, and vaccine development races. Game mechanics modelled on pandemic vectors provide multiple narratives: battle, quest, detection, discovery. There is satisfaction in playing “against” disease–and winning. Real pandemic is not as tidy as a game. But can games support understanding about the societal challenges we now face? Yes.

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?

When scientists first suggested population-wide social distancing as the only feasible way to suppress Covid-19, they were the first to admit it may not work in a free society. We are now months into placing mass restrictions on human behavior to suppress a virus that lacks an effective vaccine or treatment. Now is the time to ask: is this the authoritarian nightmare many feared, or will freedom and democracy survive Covid-19?

Covid-19 is teaching us the stern lesson that economic well-being and health justice are two sides of the same coin. To weather pandemics and restore the social contact that economic life demands, we need to sign a new social contract with public health.

Around the world, governments are looking for safe ways to lift unprecedented restrictions on public activities to curb the spread of Covid-19. So-called immunity passports could be key to the effort to selectively ease restrictions for people presumed to be immune to the virus. But there are scientific and ethical questions to be worked out before they can be deployed. .

In the rush to find a Covid-19 vaccine and one or more drugs to treat the deadly disease, concerns are being raised that ethical standards for conducting human clinical trials and the evidentiary standards for determining whether interventions are safe and effective, might be loosened.

Canada has a fraction of the number of cases of Covid-19 as the U.S. Canadians feel vulnerable. But Canadians and Americans need to find ways to build and maintain trust within and across our borders.

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.

Hastings Center fellows in China discuss ethical questions about the response to the spreading coronavirus.

Another June. Another public outcry about cruelty as policy harming migrants in United States custody. This summer, the photo of a drowned family, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter, Valeria, of El Salvador, shocks the conscience. Reporters are documenting the inhumane conditions in a Border Patrol facility where hundreds of children have been held. How should our field respond?

The federal government's proposed rule to disqualify families from public housing if any member is undocumented will harm children, families, and cities.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

The World Health Organization will hold an emergency committee meeting on the pandemic reemergence of Zika virus and the explosive increase in reported cases of congenital microcephaly in Brazil possibly linked to...

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...

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...

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