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
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
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...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...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...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...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
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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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)...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...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...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...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,...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
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...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....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...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
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...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...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....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...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
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
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
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
“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...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
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
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...Hastings Center News
Hastings Project Addresses Profound Questions about Human Gene Editing
The Hastings Center has launched an international project that focuses on the social and ethical implications of using powerful gene editing methods on human germline cells (embryos, sperm, and eggs)....Read “Hastings Project Addresses Profound Questions about Human Gene Editing”
Hastings Center News
Call to Revisit a “Line in the Sand” Limiting Human Embryo Research
Josephine Johnston, director of research and a research scholar at The Hastings Center, has joined two co-authors in proposing a reexamination of an internationally recognized rule limiting in vitro research...Read “Call to Revisit a “Line in the Sand” Limiting Human Embryo Research”
Hastings Center News
New Book by Hastings Cofounder Daniel Callahan
In his new book, Daniel Callahan, cofounder and President Emeritus of The Hastings Center, takes on five global crises: climate change, food shortages, water shortages and quality, chronic illness and...Hastings Center News
Gregory Kaebnick on Responsible Use of Gene Drives
A National Academy of Sciences committee released a major report on June 8 on the responsible use of gene drives, a rapidly developing field of research that holds promise for...Hastings Center News
Point-Counterpoint: Callahan and Venter on Genetic Progress
What if any limits should there be on genetic research aimed at extending human longevity? Hastings Center cofounder Daniel Callahan and geneticist J. Craig Venter, parse the ethical quandaries in...Read “Point-Counterpoint: Callahan and Venter on Genetic Progress”
Hastings Center News
Hastings President Gives Harvard Commencement Speech to Bioethics Graduates
Mildred Solomon, president of The Hastings Center, delivered the commencement address to Harvard Medical School’s first master’s in bioethics graduates in May. She advised the new bioethicists on how to...Read “Hastings President Gives Harvard Commencement Speech to Bioethics Graduates”
Hastings Center News
Stem Cell Treatments: Assessing the Evidence
Should the Food and Drug Administration regulate some or all stem cell interventions? What standards of evidence should be used for making claims that stem cell interventions are safe and...Hastings Center News
Improving Patient Safety in the Operating Room
How can health care systems increase the effectiveness of patient safety checklists? Nancy Berlinger, a Hastings Center research scholar, and Elizabeth Dietz, a project manager and research assistant, examine this...Hastings Center News
Johnston Discusses Ethical Concerns about Human Gene Editing
Josephine Johnston, The Hastings Center’s director of research, discussed the science of human gene editing, the policy activity it has triggered, and the moral and ethical concerns that it raises...Read “Johnston Discusses Ethical Concerns about Human Gene Editing”