Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Clinical Trials Clinical trials are specifically designed to test the safety and efficacy of interventions in humans and are preceded by laboratory...

March 1, 2023 – The Hastings Center’s Board of Directors announced the inaugural cohort of trustees emeriti, former directors whose service, expertise, leadership, and support have helped position Hastings as the world’s...

After a string of violent crimes involving mentally ill people who are homeless, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan for police and emergency medical workers to involuntarily remove people with severe mental illness from the streets and bring them to hospitals for psychiatric evaluation. Mayor Adams said we have a “moral obligation” to help people who are mentally ill. But is this plan moral?

Severance, a popular Emmy Award-winning show streaming on Apple TV+, is a rich cultural artifact. It concerns a team of office workers at a morally questionable company that performs brain surgery on employees to sever the consciousness of their work and personal lives. The four of us were so taken by the show that we wrote these reflections on its important ethical themes.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s revised guidelines have done away with universal masking at health care facilities, making masking optional if community Covid transmission isn’t high. It’s the latest attempt of public health officials to adapt their guidance to meet the country’s fatigued sensibilities. Some patients will be at risk.

Framing the Issue Many of the most challenging ethical questions of our time address interactions between human health and the environment: How can we balance protection for the environment with...

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.

“Bioethics” has been defined in several different ways. Most broadly, it is the interdisciplinary study of ethical, legal, and social issues arising in the life sciences and health care. Though...

President Emeritus Thomas H. Murray Board Chairs Emeriti Harold EdgarJulius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology, Emeritus – Columbia Law School, Professor of Law, Emeritus, Columbia Law School, Founding...