Skip to content
Primary Navigation

The Hastings Center for Bioethics

  • Who We Are
    • Strategic Plan: 2025-2029
    • Mission
    • Team
    • Financials
    • For the Media
    • Hastings Center for Bioethics News
  • What We Do
    • Research
    • Webinars
    • Hastings Bioethics Resources
    • Events
    • Focus Areas
    • Bioethics Careers & Education
    • Newsletter
    • The Bioethics Founders’ Award
    • Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician and Nursing Awards
  • Publications
    • Hastings Center Report
    • Ethics & Human Research
    • Special Reports
    • Hastings Bioethics Forum
    • Bioethics Briefings
    • Books by Hastings Scholars
  • Support Us
    • Online Giving
    • Ways To Give
    • The Hastings Center Beneficence Society
    • Why We Give
    • Gift Planning
    • Contact Us
Search The Hastings Center

Uncategorized

Bioethics Forum Essay

The Existential Possibilities for Genome Modification of Species

In April, news broke that scientists affiliated with Colossal, a biotech startup, had used genome editing and reproductive technology to achieve the “de-extinction” of the dire wolf. A species that...
Read The Existential Possibilities for Genome Modification of Species
Bioethics Forum Essay

Medical Privacy for Royalty and the Rest of Us

 “What’s happening with my son?” a woman on the other end of the phone asked me. I wasn’t sure what to say.  I was training to be a psychiatrist, and...
Read Medical Privacy for Royalty and the Rest of Us
Bioethics Forum Essay

Unexpected Lessons from the Anatomy Lab

We put on navy blue scrubs, plastic aprons, goggles, and gloves and walked into the anatomical dissection rooms for the first time.Three other first-year medical students and I gathered around...
Read Unexpected Lessons from the Anatomy Lab
Bioethics Forum Essay

Givers Beware: Medical Charities and Deceptive Fundraising

 On a bright Sunday morning in New York’s Central Park, as October leaves bid a variegated farewell to green, nascent golds and auburns yielded for a few short hours to...
Read Givers Beware: Medical Charities and Deceptive Fundraising
Bioethics Forum Essay

Why Hospitals Should Go Greener

Conventional wisdom: Making environmentally friendly changes is a luxury that most hospitals can’t afford. Evidence: Making environmentally friendly changes can save hospitals a lot of money – and save the...
Read Why Hospitals Should Go Greener
Bioethics Forum Essay

Deepwater Horizon Explosion: Challenges for Bioethics

On November 15, the Department of Justice announced that BP Exploration and Production Inc. agreed to plead guilty to 11 counts of felony manslaughter, one count of felony obstruction of...
Read Deepwater Horizon Explosion: Challenges for Bioethics
Bioethics Forum Essay

Ethically Impossible: New Educational Tools

 By now the story of Susan Reverby’s discovery of John Cutler’s papers is well known. In 2010, she revealed details of the Guatemala studies from the U. S. Public Health...
Read Ethically Impossible: New Educational Tools
Bioethics Forum Essay

When Cutting Mental Health Spending Means Passing the Buck

It’s no secret that community-based mental health and substance use treatment services are underfunded, but less widely known is the extent of the problem. Since 2009, the height of the...
Read When Cutting Mental Health Spending Means Passing the Buck
Bioethics Forum Essay

Ethics and the Storm

I teach a seminar on ethics in health care in the newly-launched Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program at Yale.  My students include advanced practice registered nurses (nurse practitioners), senior...
Read Ethics and the Storm
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Choice Bazaar

Some years ago I wrote a book on abortion that espoused women’s right to choose abortion and was later cited in Roe v. Wade. That should have made me popular with...
Read The Choice Bazaar
Bioethics Forum Essay

Your Brain in the Courtroom

On Monday, New America Foundation in Washington, DC held a thought-provoking event, My Brain Made Me Do It, which explored the role of neuroscience in understanding human behavior, particularly that...
Read Your Brain in the Courtroom
Bioethics Forum Essay

Time to Change FDA’s Discriminatory Blood Donation Policy

A recent flurry of articles in the mainstream media (The Atlantic,CNN, Huffington Post) reflects yet another wave of protest against the Food and Drug Administration’s blood donation policy, which prohibits men who...
Read Time to Change FDA’s Discriminatory Blood Donation Policy
Bioethics Forum Essay

Health Care for Undocumented Immigrants: A Family Issue

In a presidential campaign riven with disagreement about nearly everything to do with health care, there is a notable area of bipartisan accord: both parties support improving children’s health and...
Read Health Care for Undocumented Immigrants: A Family Issue
Bioethics Forum Essay

For a Survivor, it’s Not Easy Being Pink

I am a breast cancer survivor and I am not a fan of the huge “pink” industry that has developed around breast cancer. We have ribbons, pins, and bands. We...
Read For a Survivor, it’s Not Easy Being Pink
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Presidential Bioethics Debate 2012

With the first presidential debate beginning tonight and the race entering the final stretch, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are making their final policy pitches to the American public. While...
Read The Presidential Bioethics Debate 2012
Bioethics Forum Essay

Syria’s War Against Medicine

On Monday, the Global Post published Inside Syria: One Hospital’s Story, which offers a glimpse into an emergency room in Aleppo, Syria, flooded with wounded Syrians. “I didn’t see this amount of blood...
Read Syria’s War Against Medicine
Bioethics Forum Essay

Take Our Poll: The Facebook Effect on Organ Donation

Blair and Alfred Sadler reported here a few weeks ago on the effect of Facebook’s feature, introduced last spring, that enables users to link to their local organ donation registries and share their...
Read Take Our Poll: The Facebook Effect on Organ Donation
Bioethics Forum Essay

Conscientious Objection and Undocumented Migrants in Spain

For decades, all undocumented migrants in Spain have had access health care, but that changed drastically on September 1, when a new law went into effect that provides coverage to...
Read Conscientious Objection and Undocumented Migrants in Spain
Bioethics Forum Essay

Ritual Circumcision: Ban Metzitzah b’peh

Male newborn circumcision has been much in the news of late. In Germany, the procedure was criminalized in the Cologne Regional Court, and on August 21 the firstmohel(Jewish traditional practitioner)...
Read Ritual Circumcision: Ban Metzitzah b’peh
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Flip-flop over Foreskin

The American Academy of Pediatricians recently released a statement saying that the health benefits of circumcision outweighed the risks. This pronouncement contradicts the Academy’s earlier ruling, just thirteen years ago in 1999, which...
Read The Flip-flop over Foreskin
Bioethics Forum Essay

Can Social Media Increase Transplant Donation and Save Lives?

While at the National Institutes of Health in 1967 and 1968, we were involved in the design and drafting of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, in partnership with the Commissioners...
Read Can Social Media Increase Transplant Donation and Save Lives?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Robot and Frank, and Maybe Me

If movies are one window into the soul of America, “Robot and Frank” has some funny/sad things to say about our current approach to aging. Frank (Frank Langella, as charismatic...
Read Robot and Frank, and Maybe Me
Bioethics Forum Essay

Low-T, High Profit?

An unusually lengthy and undoubtedly expensive 90-second commercial for Androgel aired during men’s swimming and volleyball events in NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. The ad touts Androgel 1.62%, a more concentrated formulation...
Read Low-T, High Profit?
Bioethics Forum Essay

“End of Life,” Value Judgments, and Ending Lives

It may be more than just discrimination at work. As is to be expected, once people start reflecting on an essay as important and provocative as Bill Peace’s“Comfort Care as...
Read “End of Life,” Value Judgments, and Ending Lives
Bioethics Forum Essay

Disability Discrimination: The Author Responds

I suspect most people with a disability fear even the most routine hospitalization. We do not fear any of the commonplace indignities those without a disability worry about when hospitalized....
Read Disability Discrimination: The Author Responds
Bioethics Forum Essay

Research Bias Compromises Chimpanzee Protection Efforts

In December 2011, a landmark Institute of Medicine (IOM) report concluded that advances in science and medicine “have rendered chimpanzees largely unnecessary as research subjects.” Yet a recent search on the U.S....
Read Research Bias Compromises Chimpanzee Protection Efforts
Bioethics Forum Essay

Disability Discrimination: A Doctor’s View

This is the third commentary about “Comfort Care as Denial of Personhood,” a powerful essay in the July-August Hastings Center Reportthat describes a chilling encounter between a physician and a seriously ill disabled patient.  The author,...
Read Disability Discrimination: A Doctor’s View
Bioethics Forum Essay

Disability Discrimination: Risky Business for “Consenting” Adults

This is the second commentary about “Comfort Care as Denial of Personhood,” a powerful essay in the July-August Hastings Center Report that describes a chilling encounter between a physician and a seriously ill disabled patient.  The...
Read Disability Discrimination: Risky Business for “Consenting” Adults
Bioethics Forum Essay

Disability Discrimination

A powerful essay in the July-August Hastings Center Report describes a chilling encounter between a physician and a seriously ill disabled patient.  The author, William J. Peace, who has been paralyzed from...
Read Disability Discrimination
Bioethics Forum Essay

Health Care Reform: How to Fail

I write this in the last days of the run-up to the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act. If it comes down against the ACA in some important...
Read Health Care Reform: How to Fail
Bioethics Forum Essay

Electronic Health Records: Balancing Progress and Privacy

Regardless of the fate of the Affordable Care Act, it has set in motion a drive toward greater use of information technology, particularly with regard to electronic health records (EHRs)....
Read Electronic Health Records: Balancing Progress and Privacy
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Minimalist as Maximalist: Food Ethics and Workers’ Rights

Mark Bittman, the New York Times food writer who created the no-fail “minimalist” recipes affixed to many a locavore refrigerator door, is an ethical maximalist.  In his 1994 book, Thick and Thin:Moral Argument...
Read The Minimalist as Maximalist: Food Ethics and Workers’ Rights
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Tough-Minded and the Tender-Minded

Some people are addicted to crossword puzzles, others to new shoes, and still others to collecting baseball statistics. One of my addictions is that of comparing policy arguments in very...
Read The Tough-Minded and the Tender-Minded
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Difficult Child of Medical Progress

The most seemingly sensible diagnosis of our health care cost problem over the years has been to reduce or eliminate waste and inefficiency. Of late that interest has greatly accelerated....
Read The Difficult Child of Medical Progress
Bioethics Forum Essay

“You Can Refuse This”

I recently landed in a New York City hospital due to complications from diverticulitis coupled with a severe allergic reaction to an antibiotic that I was taking to treat the...
Read “You Can Refuse This”
Bioethics Forum Essay

Anthrax Vaccine Trials for Children: Precautionary or Premature?

Last Thursday, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues met in Washington, DC to assess the ethics of a clinical trial on anthrax vaccines for children. Secretary of Health and...
Read Anthrax Vaccine Trials for Children: Precautionary or Premature?
Bioethics Forum Essay

“Doing Bioethics” in Pakistan

In my seven years as head of the Center of Biomedical Ethics and Culture (CBEC) at the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT) in Karachi I am often asked...
Read “Doing Bioethics” in Pakistan
Bioethics Forum Essay

Arizona’s Ultrasound Mandate, Abortion, and the War on Women

Eager to join the ongoing “war on women” and seize the opportunity to roll back women’s reproductive rights, Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed into law the Women’s Health and Safety...
Read Arizona’s Ultrasound Mandate, Abortion, and the War on Women
Bioethics Forum Essay

Nurse Practitioners: One Answer to the Nation’s Primary Care Shortage

I was teaching a group of nursing students at a major New York City hospital a few months ago when one young student came to me, pale and perspiring. She...
Read Nurse Practitioners: One Answer to the Nation’s Primary Care Shortage
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...
Read Medicine as a Weapon in Syria and Beyond
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Ethical Imperialism of Moral Science

In December, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues released a 200-page report, Moral Science: Protecting Participants in Human Subjects in Research. Continuing a decades-old tradition, the report treats...
Read The Ethical Imperialism of Moral Science
The Hastings Center
  • Connect:
  • The Hastings Center on Facebook
  • The Hastings Center on Linkedin
  • The Hastings Center on Twitter / X
  • The Hastings Center on YouTube
  • The Hastings Center on Instagram
  • The Hastings Center on Threads
  • The Hastings Center on Bluesky
  • Send The Hastings Center an Email

Registered 501(c)(3).
EIN: 13-2662222
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

  • Who We Are
    • Strategic Plan: 2025-2029
    • Mission
    • Team
    • Financials
    • For the Media
    • Hastings Center for Bioethics News
  • What We Do
    • Research
    • Webinars
    • Hastings Bioethics Resources
    • Events
    • Focus Areas
    • Bioethics Careers & Education
    • Newsletter
    • The Bioethics Founders’ Award
    • Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician and Nursing Awards
  • Publications
    • Hastings Center Report
    • Ethics & Human Research
    • Special Reports
    • Hastings Bioethics Forum
    • Bioethics Briefings
    • Books by Hastings Scholars
  • Support Us
    • Online Giving
    • Ways To Give
    • The Hastings Center Beneficence Society
    • Why We Give
    • Gift Planning
    • Contact Us
Never Miss an Article.New Forum posts delivered to your inbox.
Name
yourname@example.com
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
johnsmith@example.com
Interests

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. We never share your private information with third parties.AgreeNoPrivacy policy
  • Who We Are
    • Back
    • Strategic Plan: 2025-2029
    • Mission
    • Team
    • Financials
    • For the Media
    • Hastings Center for Bioethics News
  • What We Do
    • Back
    • Research
    • Webinars
    • Hastings Bioethics Resources
    • Events
    • Focus Areas
    • Bioethics Careers & Education
    • Newsletter
    • The Bioethics Founders’ Award
    • Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician and Nursing Awards
  • Publications
    • Back
    • Hastings Center Report
    • Ethics & Human Research
    • Special Reports
    • Hastings Bioethics Forum
    • Bioethics Briefings
    • Books by Hastings Scholars
  • Support Us
    • Back
    • Online Giving
    • Ways To Give
    • The Hastings Center Beneficence Society
    • Why We Give
    • Gift Planning
    • Contact Us
  •  
  • Donate Now
  •  
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • Twitter / X
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Threads
  • Bluesky
  • Contact
  •  
  • Events
    Upcoming Events
    Previous Events
  • Receive Our Newsletter

  •  
  • For the Media
  • Terms of Use
  • Sitemap