A code of conduct for artificial intelligence in health, health care, and biomedical was released on May19 by the National Academy of Medicine’s AI Code of Conduct initiative; Hastings Center...

A newly available kind of genetic testing, called polygenic embryo screening, promises to screen for conditions that can include cancer, obesity, autism, and bipolar disorder. What would it mean culturally...

What circumstances might justify causing the deliberate extinction of a species? That’s the subject of a Policy Forum published in Science by Hastings Center research director Gregory Kaebnick and co-authors....

The Hastings Center for Bioethics invites applications for the 2025-26 cohort of Sadler Scholars from doctoral students whose bioethics research focuses on the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of...

Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky appeared on the CBS News show “60 Minutes” on May 4 to discuss ethical issues raised by the increasing popularity of egg freezing as a...

The Hastings Center for Bioethics launched its five-year strategic plan at a public event in New York on April 24. Hundreds attended in person at Rockefeller University and via livestream...

The Hastings Center and The Cunniff-Dixon Foundation are pleased to announce three recipients of the 2025 Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Nursing Awards, which honor nurses who demonstrate extraordinary compassion and skill...

I. Glenn Cohen, JD, is the James A. Atwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law; Deputy Dean of Harvard Law School; and Faculty Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health...

The latest conversation in The Big Question, a collaboration between The Hastings Center and the Museum of Science in Boston, features journalist and IVF patient Anna Louie Sussman. She sits...

Many prescription drugs are prohibitively expensive. In the United States, brand-name prescription drug prices are higher than in other wealthy countries. What prices can be ethically justified? “Ethical Drug Pricing,”...

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into U.S. health care, patients should know the ways in which AI is being used in their care, concludes a new paper, “Bring a...

Caribbean basin countries are experiencing some of the most destabilizing impacts of climate change—destruction of entire villages, increases in diseases and other health harms. In a recent Hastings Center webinar,...

Michele Goodwin, JD, LLM, SJD, is the Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy at Georgetown University and a Hastings Center Fellow. She...

On behalf of the board and staff of The Hastings Center, we mourn the loss of Tom Beauchamp III, a towering figure in the field of bioethics, who passed away...

The Hastings Center is teaming up with the Museum of Science in Boston for Season 2 of The Big Question, which premiered on February 24, kicking off with a conversation...

Caribbean basin countries are experiencing some of the most destabilizing impacts of climate change—entire villages destroyed, increases in diseases and other health harms. These countries contributed little to global climate...

The Hastings Center and the Center for ELSI Resources and Analysis (CERA) are proud to announce a new partnership to support career development for students who are interested in ethical,...

Applications are open for 2025 Hastings Center Summer Bioethics Program, a five-day live online program for undergraduate students who are interested in bioethics issues and related careers who have limited...

The Hastings Center’s longstanding visiting scholars program, which was halted during the Covid-19 pandemic, is back. Applications for stays are now open. The program enables scholars from institutions around the...

The Hastings Center is launching the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Global Bioethics Program, a two-year pilot initiative connecting Hastings Center Fellows as mentors with early-career bioethicists from low-resource regions around...

The Hastings Center welcomes Louise P. King, MD, JD, to its board of directors. She is the director of reproductive bioethics at the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics. She...

Genomics is being integrated into biomedical research, medicine, and public health at a rapid pace, but the capacities necessary to ensure the fair, global distribution of benefits are lagging. A...

It has been a successful 2024 thanks to our community of readers and supporters who trust The Hastings Center to illuminate and thoughtfully explore ethical issues in health, science, and...

Welcome to our inaugural chat, the first in a series of informal conversations between Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky and a Hastings Center fellow or other distinguished bioethicist about a...

The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of the 2024 fellows. Hastings Center fellows are a group of about 300 individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has informed...

Artificial intelligence is changing the landscape of health care delivery and biomedical research, but policymakers lament the paucity of accessible–and urgently needed–advice and evidence to make informed responsible decisions in...

In vitro fertilization and other reproductive technologies are major issues in this year’s elections. Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky and colleagues created and analyzed the first dataset of 20 years...

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...

The Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and the Columbia Division of Ethics will lead a five-year expansion of their hub for research on the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI)...

Nominations are open for the 2025 Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Nursing Awards. Prizes of $25,000 each will go to three nurses who provide outstanding end-of-life care, based on compassionate service and...

New NIH-funded project will explore ethical and policy challenges raised by gene therapies.

Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky moderated a discussion with experts Reed Tuckson and Timothy Caulfield on disinformation, trust, and the role of AI, focusing on current and future threats to...

Allen E. Buchanan, PhD, and Bernard Lo, MD, have been named recipients of the 2024 Bioethics Founders’ Award. The Bioethics Founders’ Award, given by The Hastings Center, recognizes individuals from...

The MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago announced that its 2024 MacLean Center Prize in Clinical Ethics and Health Outcomes will be awarded to Hastings Center...

The Hastings Center welcomes Reed V. Tuckson, MD, FACP, to its board of directors. Dr. Tuckson is a co-convener of the Coalition for Trust in Health and Science, which is...

The Hastings Center welcomes Rachel R. Hardeman, PhD, MPH, to its board of directors. She is the Blue Cross Endowed Professor of Health and Racial Equity and the founding director...

A research team at The Hastings Center has been approved for $1.5 million in funding by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to study organizational trustworthiness as it relates to...

Since 1969, The Hastings Center has led efforts to address complex challenges arising in health, science, and technology. As someone who clearly understands our mission, would you value knowing that...

Race and genetics research, the ethics of AI, disability bioethics, and rural health care access were among the broad range of topics covered during The Hastings Center’s third annual Summer...

Using human voice as a biomarker of disease is an area of research that is gaining momentum with the help of artificial intelligence. But it is a challenge to develop...

Until recently, medicine had little to offer most of the millions of people with rare genetic conditions. That changed in 2019, when the first genetic intervention was developed for a...

Federally Qualified Health Centers—federally funded nonprofit primary care centers—were critical points of access for underserved patients during the Covid pandemic, administering 61% of their Covid vaccinations to people of color,...

Our campus overlooking the Hudson River came to life on the beautiful evening of June 13 when many old and new friends gathered at our open house. Scientists, doctors, executives,...

The Hastings Center has selected seven doctoral students in the fields of neuroscience, human genetics, sociology, global health, and health policy as the 2024-2025 Sadler Scholars. The Sadler Scholar initiative,...

“Artificial wombs are moving from the realm of science fiction to possible trials with severely premature babies,” write Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky and Louise P. King, a surgeon and...

Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky was a guest on Doctor Radio Reports on SiriusXM on June 4, discussing AI in health care and other bioethics issues. Asked whether she thinks...

Hastings Center research director Gregory Kaebnick sat down with graphic journalist Deb Lucke to discuss the ethics of deliberate extinction—the use of genetic technologies to sacrifice certain harmful species for...

The Hastings Center is pleased to announce three staff promotions in the Advancement, Research, and Editorial Departments. The promotions are part of a reorganization meant to optimize the alignment of...

The Hastings Center and The Cunniff-Dixon Foundation are pleased to announce six recipients of awards that honor physicians for providing exemplary care to patients nearing the end of life. The...

Join us on our campus overlooking the Hudson River for a conversation about AI, Health, and Bioethics featuring Leigh Hafrey, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, and...

Nancy Neveloff Dubler, a Hastings Center fellow whose pathbreaking work shaped the field of medical ethics, died on April 14. Dubler worked on a wide range of bioethics topics, but...

Scientists around the world are testing artificial wombs. “I am absolutely pro that technology because I think it has great potential to save babies,” said Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky...

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;...

What does it take to assure that ecotourism is done ethically, taking into account its impact on local residents and local ecosystems? Should doctors tell breast cancer patients all their...

A new ruling by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that requires teaching hospitals to get written consent from patients before undergoing intimate medical exams was informed by...

Research that involves implanting devices into the brains of human volunteers creates a special moral obligation that extends beyond the trial period—an obligation that researchers, device manufacturers, and funders owe...

Two week ago, Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky spoke at the 12th annual Lake Nona Impact Forum, a three-day event that aspires to build “the Wellbeing Ecosystem of the Future,...

Despite increasing attention to the harms of ableism in health care and among health care providers, few institutions have made significant changes to the ways medical students and trainees are...

A new Hastings Center special report considers how America’s aging society responds to the needs and concerns of people facing dementia. New therapies that may slow progression of this terminal...

The first therapy using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology—a drug for sickle-cell disease-—was approved a couple of months ago and hailed as a milestone. What might be the next CRISPR drugs?...

The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of the 2023 fellows. Hastings Center fellows are a group of more than 200 individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has...

Does the Endangered Species Act, the landmark 50-year environmental law, protect dangerous invasive species from deliberate extinction using new genomic technologies? That question was the focus of a comment in...

Five Hastings Center senior research scholars were elected Hastings Center fellows on December 8, 2023: Nancy Berlinger, Josephine Johnston, Gregory E. Kaebnick, Karen J. Maschke, and Erik Parens. Read about...

Josephine Johnston, a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center, was elected a Hastings Center Fellow on December 8, 2023. Hastings Center Fellows are a group of more than 200 individuals...

Karen J. Maschke, a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center and editor of Ethics & Human Research, was elected a Hastings Center fellow on December 8, 2023. Hastings Center...

Erik Parens, a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center, was elected a Hastings Center fellow on December 8, 2023. Hastings Center Fellows are a group of more than 200 individuals...

Gregory E. Kaebnick, a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center and editor of the Hastings Center Report, was elected a Hastings Center Fellow on December 8, 2023. Hastings Center...

Nancy Berlinger, a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center, was elected a Hastings Center fellow on December 8, 2023. Hastings Center Fellows are a group of more than 200 individuals...

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...

The Hastings Center launched a program on climate bioethics in partnership with the Caribbean Research Ethics Initiative (CREEi) and Clarkson University. The program will recruit eight Caribbean bioethics scholars to spend...

The social implications of emerging reproductive technologies—including possibly creating human eggs in the lab–were explored last week by Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky and senior advisor Joel Michael Reynolds in...

Editors at seven scholarly journals published recommendations on the responsible use of generative artificial intelligence tools by authors, reviewers, and editors. The recommendations ban regarding generative AI as an author – but allow its use to generate text and illustrations. Gregory E. Kaebnick, editor of the Hastings Center Report, is lead author of the recommendations.

Norman Daniels, PhD, the Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Emeritus at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Rebecca Dresser,...

A new project at The Hastings Center will propose recommendations for deciding if especially dangerous species should be eradicated with gene editing technology. Candidate species could include mosquitos that transmit...

The first ethical framework for conducting human research on commercial spaceflight was proposed today in an article in Science by an international team that included Hastings Center president Vardit Ravitsky. Ravitsky’s contribution focused on promoting diversity among the researchers and participants, which is essential to ensuring the research benefits society at large.

We’re pleased to welcome the newest member of our research team, Virginia A. Brown, PhD. She focuses on social justice, population health, and public engagement. She joined The Hastings Center...

When a psychology professor in Kentucky created a racial equity training program at her university, she received death threats. Efforts to silence, attack, and intimidate teachers and students are on...

Nominations are open for awards that recognize six physicians for providing outstanding care to patients nearing the end of life. The awards are given by The Hastings Center and the...

Welcome to The Hastings Center! You join the Center from the University of Montreal, where you were a professor in the bioethics program in the School of Public Health. You’re...

The first meeting of the National Academy of Medicine’s AI initiative framed the issues highlighting the benefits and risks that AI presents for health, health care, and biomedical science and...

“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...

The Hastings Center is saddened by the passing of the Rev. Francis (Frank) Hartley Geer, who served on the Hastings board from 2010 to 2020. He died on July 19...

“For anyone familiar with the history of eugenics, the mention of research into the genomics of an outcome like educational attainment can inspire dread. And for anyone who knows that the...

The use of racial categories in biomedical research often misattributes the cause of health inequities to genetic and inherent biological differences rather than to racism. Improving research practices around race...

Twenty-one states have laws barring transgender youth-athletes from competing on public-school sports teams in accordance with their gender identity. Proponents claim that transgender females in particular have inherent physiological advantages...

Justice and Water. Race in Bioethics. Reproductive Ethics. Global Health Justice. These were among the wide range of topics explored in The Hastings Center Summer Bioethics Program for Underrepresented Undergraduates,...

The National Academy of Medicine has appointed Hastings Center president-designate Vardit Ravitsky to a new initiative aiming to ensure the safe, ethical, reliable, and equitable use of artificial intelligence in...

The term “gender-affirming care” is almost always applied to treatment for transgender people, but an article in the current issue of the Hastings Center Report argues that such care predominates...

The Hastings Center has selected six doctoral students in fields such as population health, social ethics, and sociology as the 2023-24 Sadler Scholars. The Sadler Scholars are a select group...

A new commentary considers the legal risks that physicians and health care facilities may incur when they miscode patients’ medical records to conceal an abortion. The article, published in JAMA,...

Josephine Johnston, a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center, was elected to the board of the International Association of Bioethics. Johnston, who is based in New Zealand, will represent...

The Supreme Court’s 1990 decision in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, recognized an individual constitutional right to decline life-sustaining medical treatment. The Court reinforced that right a few...

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...

A new consensus report makes recommendations for responsibly conducting and communicating controversial research on the genetic contributions to human social and behavioral characteristics. The report, “Wrestling with Social and Behavioral...

Louisiana—a state with sweeping abortion restrictions—issued an emergency declaration last August with a list of fetal diagnoses for which abortions will be permitted. The “List of Conditions that Shall Deem...

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...

The Hastings Center staff and board of directors are saddened by the passing of Patricia Klingenstein, a former board member and longtime supporter. She died peacefully on February 11 in...

How did federally funded nonprofit primary care centers for medically underserved patients promote equitable access to Covid vaccination? A new publication examines this question and reveals valuable lessons for supporting just vaccine allocation and improving health equity in the United States.

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...

A new report on the ethics of crossing species boundaries by inserting human cells into (nonhuman) animals for research purposes–research surrounded by debate–makes recommendations clarifying the ethical issues and calling...

Willard Gaylin, an acclaimed psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and a pioneering scholar in bioethics who co-founded The Hastings Center, died on December 30. He was 97.

Each year, tens of thousands of clinical ethics case consultations are performed in hospitals around the country. These consultations respond to fraught, complex questions from patients, families, health care professionals,...

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...

Most Americans want to age in place, but that goal relies on housing affordability, accessibility, and proximity to services. A new project, led by Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger,...

The Hastings Center Report will launch a series of open-access articles and essays on the ethical, legal, and social implications of new findings in neuroscience. The series, supported by the...

Chatbots powered by artificial intelligence, smartphone applications, and other “telemental” services are promoted as innovative solutions to skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety, and mental distress. But they pose an array of harms, writes Emma Bedor Hiland in “How Smart Tech Tried to Solve the Mental Health Crisis and Only Made It Worse,” the winner of the 2022 David Roscoe Award for an Early-Career Essay on Science, Ethics, and Society.

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...

Anita L. Allen, JD, PhD, the Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law, and Farhat Moazam, MD, PhD,...

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...

A new primer frames the threat racism poses to public health, stating that health equity in general is compromised when any group doesn’t have the resources needed for health. “Racism...

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded The Hastings Center a collaborative research grant for The Meanings of Dementia: Interpreting Cultural Narratives of Aging Societies. This project will produce...

Equitable health care for all is a bioethical imperative. And discrimination against people with disabilities—ableism—stands in the way of fulfilling that imperative. A new Hastings Center project constitutes the first...

A new primer that frames the moral and policy issues around climate change calls it unlike any problem that humanity has ever faced. “No issue demands greater care in balancing...

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...

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...

The Hastings Center is pleased to welcome the 2022-2023 Sadler Scholars, a select group of nine doctoral students with research relevant to bioethics who are from racial and ethnic communities...

The Hastings Center and The Cunniff-Dixon Foundation are pleased to announce nine recipients of awards that honor clinicians for outstanding care provided to patients nearing the end of life. The...

The Hastings Center staff and community are saddened by the death of Sheldon Krimsky, a Hastings Center fellow, who warned of the risk of conflicts of interest from private companies...

A new Hastings Center special report calls on the field of bioethics to take the lead in efforts to remedy racial injustice and health inequities in the United States. As...

Artificial intelligence, gene editing, and other powerful new technologies have profound implications for society. They will likely bring both potential benefits and safety concerns and have other ethical and social...

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.

New technologies are expanding the reach and accessibility of preimplantation genetic testing of human embryos. But what these advances can deliver is still unclear, and a frank assessment of their...

“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...

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...

Bestselling author Amy Bloom‘s world was altered forever when an MRI indicated that her husband Brian had Alzheimer’s disease. Together, led by Brian, Brian and Amy made the decision to travel to Switzerland to access an assisted dying process...

Bias and inaccuracy are pervasive in the marketing of noninvasive prenatal tests (NIPTs), concludes an early-view study in the Hastings Center Report. The tests are marketed to consumers around the...

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...

A close relationship with patients that holistically addresses medical and social needs is crucial to advancing health equity, said Marshall Chin, a professor of healthcare ethics at the University of...

The Hastings Center is saddened by the passing of Matthew A. (“Andy”) Baxter, a visionary and dedicated champion for better end of life care, who founded the Cunniff-Dixon Foundation, committed...

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...

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...

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...

The Hastings Center is accepting applications for the 2022-23 Sadler Scholars, a select group of up to six doctoral students with research interests relevant to bioethics who are from racial...

Nominations are open for awards that recognize six physicians and two nurses for providing outstanding care to patients nearing the end of life. The awards are given by The Hastings...

Ethics guidance during the Covid-19 pandemic has been valuable in informing some health policies and practices, such as oversight of research and crisis standards of care. But it has been...

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...

The Hastings Center presented a two-day virtual health equity summit on January 19  and 20, in collaboration with the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) Center for Health Justice, the...

The Hastings Center is pleased  to announce the election of 24 new fellows. Hastings Center fellows are a group of more than 200 individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has...

The Hastings Center and The Cunniff-Dixon Foundation announce three new awards to honor clinicians for outstanding care provided to patients nearing the end of life, based on technical competence, personal...

Xenotransplantation is a novel experimental treatment that involves transplanting organs from nonhuman animals into humans to reduce the organ shortage—a public health problem. A new four-year research study, supported by...

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.

New research on genomic influences on human traits such as intelligence, educational attainment, household income, and sexual behavior is newsworthy and of high public interest. But covering the research findings...

Faced with existential threats such as climate change, some scholars argue that “moral bioenhancements,” including psychotropics drugs and other interventions, are needed to improve our collective moral capacity to do...

As Covid spreads and leaves intensive care units at or near capacity in several states, some regions have approved crisis standards of care, which involve health care rationing. The latest...

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...

“Easily accessible information for funders, researchers, policymakers, journalists, industry, and patient groups” — featured in Nature Genetics New research on the genomic influences on traits such as intelligence, household income,...

From AIDS to Covid-19, how have pandemics and epidemics shaped health policy and bedside decision-making? How have major medical societies’ statements on discrimination and racial justice evolved over the decades?...

From AIDS to Covid-19, how have pandemics and epidemics shaped health policy and bedside decision-making? How have major medical societies’ statements on discrimination and racial justice evolved over the decades?...

Patricia A. King, JD, Professor Emerita of Georgetown Law, has been named the 2021 recipient of The Bioethics Founders’ Award, formerly the Henry Knowles Beecher Award. The award, given by...

[Transcript created by voice recognition] Danielle Pacia, The Hastings Center Hello and welcome to Breakthrough or Breakdown. Should the FDA have approved the new Alzheimer’s drug, a Hastings Center conversation?...

The Hastings Center is pleased to welcome the inaugural Sadler Scholars, a select group of six doctoral students with research interests relevant to bioethics who are from racial and ethnic...

A new article in English Literary History by Liz Bowen, the Rice Family Fellow in Bioethics and the Humanities at The Hastings Center, explores the use of metaphors characterizing disability....

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...

Blair L. Sadler, JD,  President Emeritus of Rady Children’s Hospital, and Georgia Robins Sadler, MBA, PhD, FAACE, a cancer researcher, have made a major gift for work on socially just...

Hastings Center board member Michele Moody-Adams was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She is the Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia...

Genetic tests claiming to predict people’s intellectual aptitudes or how much education they are likely to get are readily available via direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies. Some researchers are even proposing...

Artificial intelligence, Crispr gene editing, and other powerful new technologies have profound implications for society. They will likely bring both potential benefits and safety concerns and have other ethical and...

Introduction: Civic Learning for a Democracy in Crisis By Bruce Jennings, Michael K. Gusmano, Gregory E. Kaebnick, Carolyn Neuhaus, and Mildred Z. Solomon This multiauthored report offers wide-ranging assessments of...

A new report released by The Hastings Center concludes that civic learning in the United States, or how citizens engage in collective problem solving and make informed decisions that reflect the common good, is breaking down, threatening...

Preeminent science researcher and science policy expert Gilbert S. Omenn, MD, PhD., and national nonprofit leader Martha A. Darling have made a major gift supporting “trusted and trustworthy scientific innovation”...

An online event. February 9, 2021 at 12pm EST The Covid-19 pandemic has made longstanding, seemingly intractable inequities painfully visible. In addition to widespread suffering, African Americans and LatinX communities...

The Hastings Center released new guidance for local public health authorities and health care systems to help ensure equitable and effective prioritization of Covid-19 vaccine access, based on risk factors, in the months ahead.

The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 14 new Fellows.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made longstanding, seemingly intractable inequities painfully visible. In addition to widespread suffering, African Americans and Latinx communities are dying at three times the rate of White...

What will it take to bring about lasting justice for disabled people in the United States? When will every body—and every voice—be indispensable? Poets and activists Lateef McLeod and D.J. Savarese explored their ideas...

As communities across the world work to navigate the pandemic, The Hastings Center has assembled ethics resources for responding to novel coronavirus Covid-19. We are updating this hub throughout the...

Dr. Anthony Fauci and Mildred Solomon explored the ethical issues raised by the erosion of trust in science in a virtual discussion hosted by The Hastings Center on November 19. The nation’s top infectious diseases official and the Hastings president looked at how we can improve public understanding of complex scientific issues in this highly polarized, fraught time.

Over the past decade, the new field of social genomics has investigated how genomic differences among people are linked to differences in their behaviors and social outcomes, including educational attainment...

The answer to that question is not straightforward, as was made vivid in “Navigating: On Disability, Technology, and Experiencing the World,” a recent virtual event. It was the second in...

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...

The Hastings Center is saddened by the death of Albert Jonsen, a leader in the field of bioethics, on October 21 at the age of 89. He was a Hastings...

The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the winner of the 2020 David Roscoe Award for an Early-Career Essay on Science, Ethics, and Society.

The Hastings Center hosted a special virtual discussion on “New Ethical Questions and 21st Century Genomics” on Thursday, June 4. After the atrocities of Nazi medical experimentation, the Nuremburg Code...

Hastings Center research scholars have been talking with the press and writing on ethical issues raised by the coronavirus pandemic. Here is a selected roundup. Check back for updates.

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.

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.

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 postdoctoral researcher Lucas J. Matthews is undertaking the first-ever study to examine the potential harms of telling students about their genetic propensity for educational attainment.

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.

The Hastings Center and its late co-founder Dan Callahan were honored for their pioneering work in pursuit of a just society by the Collaborative for Palliative Care at its annual conference on Wednesday, December 12th, at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York.

Hastings Center research scholar Karen Maschke questioned recent calls in the ethics world for public engagement, enhanced governance, and greater transparency regarding technological innovation. “Making the calls is easy,” Maschke said, but taking action means disrupting existing centers of power, and requires hearing a multitude of challenges to the underpinnings of innovation. She spoke at a panel entitled “50 Years of Bioethics – Reflections from The Hastings Center” at a conference in Boston.

Hastings Center research scholar Karen Maschke questioned recent calls in the ethics world for public engagement, enhanced governance, and greater transparency regarding technological innovation. “Making the calls is easy,” Maschke said, but taking action means disrupting existing centers of power, and requires hearing a multitude of challenges to the underpinnings of innovation. She spoke at a panel entitled “50 Years of Bioethics – Reflections from The Hastings Center” at the annual Prim*r conference in Boston this week. Primr is a professional organization focused on research ethics.

In an age of new biotechnologies, from gene editing to neural enhancement, is there a tension in the idea that humans have special value because they’re somehow different or exceptional in nature? Dwelling on the idea that there’s something extraordinary about being human – and ignoring our kinship with life on our planet – is becoming a problem, says Melanie Challenger, an award-winning British writer and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics who has been a visiting scholar at The Hastings Center in November.

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.”

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.

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.

Ruth Faden, PhD, MPH, founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Bioethics, was named the recipient of The Hastings Center’s 2019 Henry Knowles Beecher Award for lifetime achievement in bioethics.

Public discussion and policy often cite “aging in place” as a way to improve quality of life and reduce costs of older people. However, in part because of socioeconomic differences and structural inequalities, not all older adults can live in or move to age-supportive communities, neighborhoods, or homes that match their values and needs.These challenges are the focus of a public event cosponsored by The Hastings Center and the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The Hastings Center’s director of research Josephine Johnston will explore how parental responsibilities are challenged by new genetic technologies in the keynote address of the “Ethics of Technology,” a yearlong lecture series at Washington & Lee University that begins on September 26.

New book edited by Hastings Center scholars explores fundamental questions about the nature and well-being of human beings at a time when a revolutionary new biotechnology could permanently change the human species.

New book edited by Hastings Center scholars explores fundamental questions about the nature and well-being of human beings at a time when a revolutionary new biotechnology could permanently change the human species.

In a new essay in the Health Affairs Blog Grantswatch, Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger and president Mildred Z. Solomon offer a glimpse of the Center’s major new research agenda on the ethics of population aging, with a focus on the precarity of older adults, questions of justice, and issues of personal choice. The work is made possible by a generous grant to The Hastings Center from The Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust as part of its visionary support for the Center’s research and public engagement on ethical challenges facing aging societies.

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?”

How might bioethics help address the threats posed by climate change? A Hastings Center meeting scoped out the options.

What do patients and DTC genetic test consumers need to know about the clinical applications of genetics? That question was the focus of a recent public event at the New York Academy of Sciences, cosponsosred by The Hastings Center. Read a recap of the highlights and watch the livestream.

Through a series of public events featuring writers, scholars, and artists with disabilities, the project will explore how technologies can be used to promote or thwart human flourishing.

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...

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.

What’s actually wrong with doping—if all athletes had access to the same performance-enhancing drugs, wouldn’t that make competitions fair?  If the purpose of sport is to maximize performance, shouldn’t we...

Breeders have worked for centuries to produce animals, such as greyhounds or racehorses, with traits for peak sport performance. Today, gene editing technologies such as CRISPR could accomplish in one...

Advances in preimplantation genetic diagnosis, genetic testing, and genome editing have renewed discussion about the ethics of “designer babies,” or children selected or engineered to have certain preferred traits, like...

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...

The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 18 new Fellows. Hastings Center Fellows are a group of individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has informed scholarship and/or public...

The Hastings Center’s staff and board of directors are profoundly saddened by the passing on January 3 of their friend, colleague, and trustee, Richard Payne. A neurologist, Dr. Payne was...

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...

A major international project at The Hastings Center released policy recommendations for the development of artificial intelligence and robotics to help reap the benefits and productivity gains and minimize the...

Several DNA tests claim to predict how well particular psychiatric medications are likely to work for individual patients with depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. And 23andMe just received approval to...

Artificial intelligence and robotics are beginning to transform nearly every sector and facet of modern life. While the benefits and expected benefits could be vast, there are also concerns about...

What do we really care about in sport, and how does the reckless use of biomedical enhancements undermine those values? Come to Why Doping Matters in Sports, a lecture by Hastings...

Today’s young people will inevitably grapple with decisions about emerging biotechnologies, such as whether new gene editing technologies should be used to choose the traits of their children or enhance...

Dan W. Brock has been named the recipient of The Hastings Center’s 2018 Henry Knowles Beecher Award. Throughout his career, Dr. Brock, the Francis Glessner Lee Emeritus Professor of Medical...

And what does “humanize” even mean? Those are among the questions being explored in a new Hastings Center project, funded by the National Institutes of Health, on the ethical oversight...

It has long been an ethical line not to be crossed: genetically enhancing humans – making us faster, smarter, or even kinder – in a way that is passed down...

The Hastings Center is announcing an exciting new direction for its journal on research ethics. Beginning with the January-February 2019 issue, the Center will launch Ethics & Human Research (E&HR),...

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...

With funding from the National Science Foundation, a new Hastings Center project will examine the rationale and challenges of public deliberation on the release of genetically modified insects, mammals, and...

Hastings Center cofounder and President Emeritus Daniel Callahan was awarded the 2018 Edmund Pellegrino Medal for Healthcare Ethics. The award, given annually by Samford University’s Center for Faith and 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...

Join us to mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein with a panel discussion that will explore the novel from the perspectives of bioethics, literary criticism, and science...

How should we think about the ethics of everyday interpersonal relationships focused on giving and receiving care? When home is also a care setting, how can family members and other...

Nearly 11 million Americans use long-term care for help with daily tasks such as bathing and preparing meals, and yet few have private long-term care insurance. Thus, most of the...

With the popularity of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, genomic knowledge is assuming a growing role in shaping human life. On the one hand, this knowledge is a gift, offering insights into...

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...

Hastings Center research scholar Carolyn P. Neuhaus participated in a panel discussion on Martha’s Vineyard on July 12 to discuss a proposal to release genetically modified mice to curb the...

The idea that there’s a normal human body has traditionally been “the glue that renders any given modern concept of health, illness, or disease coherent,” writes Joel Michael Reynolds, the...

What are the right and wrong ways to speak about disability? Joel Michael Reynolds The Hastings Center’s Rice Family Postdoctoral Fellow in Bioethics and the Humanities, was an invited speaker...

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...

Two distinguished bioethics scholars and Fellows of The Hastings Center died recently: H. Tristram Englehardt Jr. and Baruch Brody. They were among the early leaders of the new field of...

Genomics, new forms of assisted reproduction, neuroscience—these and other technologies give us transformative powers that we are just starting to realize. Nearly every report or commission that seeks to inform...

Research Scholar Nancy Berlinger is doing original research at The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center on the shores of Lake Como, Italy, as part of a selective academic writing residency. The...

Where do we draw the line between safe and dangerous applications of CRISPR, the gene editing technology that allows us to make permanent, even heritable, changes to the genetic code?...

Technologies are transforming the planet and its inhabitants, human and nonhuman, calling out for assessment and wise decision-making. Yet trust in science is eroding and polarization deeply threatens our ability...

Eric Kandel, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine who has done groundbreaking work on the molecular mechanisms of memory, spoke at The Hastings Center on May...

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...

The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 11 new Fellows. Hastings Center Fellows are a group of individuals of outstanding accomplishment, whose work has informed scholarship and/or...

That question was the focus of  “Long Term Care in New York City, circa 2030,” a panel discussion hosted by the New York City Bar Association on May 3 that included...

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...

A physician who founded a pediatric palliative care program and another who developed a nationally recognized curriculum to improve communication between doctors and patients with advanced kidney disease are among...

Defining Death: Organ Transplantation and the 50-Year Legacy of the Harvard Report on Brain Death, the 2018 Harvard Medical School’s Annual Bioethics Conference, took place from April 11 to 13...

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...

That was one of the many questions explored at a public event at the New York Academy of Sciences on May 21, cosponsored by The Hastings Center, the Aspen Brain...

If all athletes had access to the same performance-enhancing drugs, wouldn’t that make competitions fair? If the purpose of sport is to maximize performance, shouldn’t we welcome technologies that do...

For the last quarter century, researchers have been asking whether genetic test results might have negative psychosocial effects. Anxiety, depression, disrupted relationships, and heightened stigmatization have all been posited as...

Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger and cofounder and President Emeritus Daniel Callahan  participated in a major public workshop on February 12 and 13. “Physician-Assisted Death: Scanning the Landscape and...

Frankenstein, published 200 years ago this month, asked what it means to be human. In the age of CRISPR and artificial intelligence, that question endures. On Public Radio International’s “Science...

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...

In the wake of Olympic doping scandals and just before the Winter Games in Pyeongchang in February, a new book by Hastings Center President Emeritus Thomas Murray explores the use...

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...

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...

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...

Climate change, nuclear proliferation, and the advancement of gene editing and other transformative biotechnologies pose enormous global challenges. How can we promote responsible science, good governance, and opportunities for public...

How can secondary school science teachers help their students think critically about the social and ethical implications of recent advances in gene editing?  The Hastings Center is inviting these teachers...

Artificial intelligence and brain-computer interfaces could revolutionize the treatment of paralysis, schizophrenia, and more. But these neurotechnologies must respect and preserve people’s privacy, identity, agency, and equality, states an article...

Daniel Callahan, cofounder and president emeritus of The Hastings Center, organized a daylong meeting to explore urgent issues in global health and discuss ways that bioethics can help address them....

Is there a parental obligation to create “better” babies? Now that scientists can genetically edit plants and animals for agricultural and other purposes, what can we learn from the longstanding...

With the power of artificial intelligence, machines can perform increasingly complex tasks, such as speech, learning, planning, and problem-solving. While AI technologies may bring great value to individuals and society,...

Albert Jonsen and Edward Frank Shotter have been named the recipients of The Hastings Center’s 2017 Henry Knowles Beecher Award for lifetime achievement in bioethics. Albert Jonsen, PhD, is emeritus...

Using gene editing to modify genes responsible for devastating illnesses such as cystic fibrosis seems overwhelmingly desirable, but could there be unintended consequences? Might the ability to select for certain...

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...

Is it appropriate for physicians to help patients end their lives? In the current issue of Southern Medical Journal, Hastings Center cofounder Daniel Callahan and Lydia S. Dugdale, an associate...

Following recent advances in gene editing technologies, including the first recorded use of CRISPR/Cas9 in human embryos in the United States, The Hastings Center cosponsored an international conference, “Genome Editing:...

In an essay in Aeon magazine, Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger argues that migrants — who make up every seventh person in the world–need more than sanctuary cities. They...

Noninvasive fetal genetic sequencing done early in pregnancy is poised to become a routine part of prenatal care. While it could offer patients substantial benefits, there is a risk that...

Disability advocates and bioethicists have long debated whether it is appropriate for individuals, particularly prospective parents engaged in reproductive decision-making, to “choose disability,” as in the case of a deaf...

Natalie Kofler, a postdoctoral research scientist at Yale University, visited The Hastings Center earlier this summer to explore the ethical questions surrounding the use of gene editing technologies in the...

The Hastings Center is saddened by the death of John Robertson, a Hastings Center Fellow, on July 5. Robertson, 74, was the Vinson & Elkins Chair at the University of...

Joel Michael Reynolds has joined The Hastings Center as its first Rice Family Postdoctoral Fellow in Bioethics and the Humanities. The fellowship is supported by the National Endowment for the...

This was one of the many big questions explored at Genomics and Society, a major conference last week on the ethical, legal, and social implications of genomic research. Several Hastings...

Hastings Center research scholar Gregory Kaebnick participated in a multidisciplinary workshop at the University of Montana in Missoula on May 25 – 26 to examine the potential for using genome...

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...

What do scientists and engineers owe to their creations? What responsibility do they bear for harms that their creations cause? How does being responsible for our creations change us? These...

A woman juggles caring for her aged father at home and going to work. A volunteer cares for an 83-year-old man who lives alone and wonders why the man’s son...

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...

Hastings Center president Mildred Solomon  delivered a keynote address at the Future of Medicine conference, a national health care conference celebrating the convergence of technology, bioethics, population health, and preventive...

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...

Braingenethics Update, a free monthly newsletter, aggregates recent scientific literature, commentary, and news on questions raised by findings on the genetics of complex human behaviors. It is produced by the...

The Hastings Center is working with the World Conference of Science Journalists to organize a pre-conference symposium, “New Genetic Technologies: Ethical Debates and Global Science Policy.” The 10th World Conference...

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...

They may have suffered devastating brain damage due to traumatic injury, or oxygen deprivation to the brain following a heart attack or stroke. They may be awake but not aware...

On April 6-7, The Hastings Center co-sponsored “The Ethics of ‘Making Babies,’” Harvard Medical School’s Annual Bioethics Conference, which explored the ethical and legal issues raised by assisted reproductive technologies. ...

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...

Seated on a stage with a museum model of a dodo and a pair of mammoth tusks, a panel of experts debated what is exciting and what is frightening about...

World-renowned theologian Harvey G. Cox, Jr. came to The Hastings Center for a wide-ranging conversation about the impact of gene editing on humanity. Joined by Daniel Callahan, cofounder of The...

Deven, a 60-year-old public school teacher, began acting erratically and irresponsibly. His doctor attributed his symptoms to depression and midlife crisis, but in fact he was suffering from frontotemporal dementia,...

The new Aspen Health Strategies Group (ASHG), formed by the Aspen Institute, just issued an important report recommending five critical ways to improve care near the end of life.  Hastings...

A symposium organized by The Hastings Center for the AAAS annual meeting took place on February 17. Click here to watch. “The Ethics of Gene Editing: Should Concerns Beyond Safety...

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,...

What lessons does Frankenstein hold for us today, when powerful new technologies such as gene editing and artificial intelligence are bringing us closer than ever to playing God? That question...

Watch the video of The Hastings Center’s public event on AI, featuring three of the world’s most prominent experts on the social and ethical implications of machine intelligence, who are...

The Hastings Center welcomes applications to its visiting scholars program, open to students, scholars, and professionals working on independent bioethics research. We offer self-catering accommodations for stays of one week...

Hastings Center research scholar Gregory Kaebnick is the lead author of an article in the November 11 issue of the journal Science that discusses the benefits of precautionary approaches to...

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,...

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...

The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of eight new Fellows. Hastings Center Fellows are a group of individuals of outstanding accomplishment, whose work has informed scholarship and/or...

Leon R. Kass has been named the recipient of The Hastings Center’s 2016 Henry Knowles Beecher Award. For more than four decades, Dr. Kass has been deeply engaged with ethical...

Advances in information technologies and artificial intelligence, biological sciences, and physical sciences are recognized as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, holding promise for bringing great benefits but also harms. Hastings Center...

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...

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 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...

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...

What if gene editing technologies such as CRISPR could be used to safely and effectively “enhance” future generations – to make them, for example, better able to perform on IQ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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)....

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...