Page
Ethics and Pandemic Response
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Pandemics: The Ethics of Mandatory and Voluntary Interventions Nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPI) such as isolation and quarantine, school closures, and social distancing measures...COVID-19
Ethical Framework for Health Care Institutions & Guidelines for Institutional Ethics Services Responding to the Coronavirus Pandemic
Managing Uncertainty, Safeguarding Communities, Guiding Practice Download as PDF Nancy Berlinger, PhD; Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH; Tia Powell, MD; D. Micah Hester, PhD; Aimee Milliken, RN, PhD, HEC-C; Rachel Fabi,...Page
Ethics and Public Health
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Public Health Ethics and Law Public health encompasses what society does to assure the conditions that are necessary for its members to...Page
Fellows
Hastings Center Fellows are an elected group of individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has informed scholarship and/or public understanding of complex ethical issues in health, health care, life sciences...Page
Ethical Challenges in the Middle Tier of Covid-19 Vaccine Allocation: Guidance for Organizational Decision-Making
Download PDF Nancy Berlinger, PhD; Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH; Tia Powell, MD; Aimee Milliken, RN, PhD, HEC-C; Parinda Khatri, PhD; Fatma Marouf, JD, MPH; Keisha Ray, PhD; Johanna Crane, PhD...Page
Covid-19 Update: Essential Resources on Immigrant Health
Updated December 12, 2020 The novel coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the vulnerabilities of low-wage immigrants to viral infection and severe Covid-19 illness. This public health emergency compounds the social (non-medical)...Read “Covid-19 Update: Essential Resources on Immigrant Health”
Bioethics Forum Essay
When Endemic Disparities Catch the Pandemic Flu: Echoes of Kubler-Ross and Rawls
Read “When Endemic Disparities Catch the Pandemic Flu: Echoes of Kubler-Ross and Rawls”
COVID-19 RESOURCES
Ethics Guidance and Resources on Covid-19
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...Page
Disaster Planning and Bioethics
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Disaster Planning and Public Health Bioethics Briefing A public health emergency exists when the health consequences of a decision have the potential...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Competing Commitments in Clinical Trials
Scholars of the ethics of clinical trials have long recognized a tension between the therapeutic obligations1 of clinicians (physician, nurses, and other health professionals) and the scientific demands of clinical...Bioethics Forum Essay
Financing Reforms to Meet a Pivotal Moment in Global Health
This year will be the most important moment for global health since WHO’s founding in 1948, but only if states give major reforms their full political and financial backing.Read “Financing Reforms to Meet a Pivotal Moment in Global Health”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
When Is It Ethical to Withhold a Research Incentive?
Researchers want to conduct an online survey to determine respondents’ attitudes toward and concerns about uses of deidentified tissue in research biobanks to see whether their concerns affect their willingness...Page
Anti-Ableist Medical Education: Meeting the Challenges
Hastings Center Issue Brief [download] Liz Bowen, Emily Cleveland-Manchanda, Peppar E.P. Cyr, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Susan Havercamp, Kristi Kirschner, Rebecca Kronk, Lisa M. Meeks, Peter Poullos, Zoie Clarise Sheets, Dorothy W....Read “Anti-Ableist Medical Education: Meeting the Challenges”
Hastings Center News
Ethics Guidance and Resources on Covid-19
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...From Bioethics Briefings
Pandemics: The Ethics of Mandatory and Voluntary Interventions
[This chapter is adapted from “Influenza Pandemic,” by Alexandra Minna Stern and Howard Markel, in From Birth to Death and Bench to Clinic: The Hastings Center Bioethics Briefing Book for...Read “Pandemics: The Ethics of Mandatory and Voluntary Interventions”
Page
Bioethics and Racism
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Racism and Health Equity Racism threatens health equity by withholding resources people need for proper health based on morally arbitrary features like...Page
Access to Therapeutic and Palliative Drugs in the Context of Covid-19: Justice and the Relief of Suffering
Page
Ethics and the End of Life
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: End of Life Care The central philosophical question in end-of-life care is how to make decisions surrounding the numerous choices about what...Page
The Hastings Center Bioethics Timeline
“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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Global Health Justice: Now Is the Time
The recognition of the social injustices surrounding the pandemic is an important opportunity to understand the longstanding links between health and social and global justice.Bioethics Forum Essay
Warp Speed Bioethics
It takes less time than ever to publish papers. But is quality sacrificed by doing bioethics at warp speed, especially during the Covid pandemic?COVID-19
Responding to Covid-19 as a Regional Public Health Challenge: Preliminary Guidelines for Regional Collaboration Involving Hospitals
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Money, Coercion, and Undue Inducement: Attitudes about Payments to Research Participants
Researchers nearly always offer money to healthy individuals—and increasingly to individuals who are ill—as an incentive to enroll in research studies and as compensation for research participation.1Yet there is a...Read “Money, Coercion, and Undue Inducement: Attitudes about Payments to Research Participants”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Pandemic Language
Hastings Center News
In the Media: The Hastings Center Responds to Covid-19
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.Read “In the Media: The Hastings Center Responds to Covid-19”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Are Physicians Hypocrites for Supporting Black Lives Matter Protests and Opposing Anti-Lockdown Protests? An Ethical Analysis
Physicians have been vocal in condemning the anti-lockdown protests while endorsing and even participating in the Black Lives Matter protests. This has led to criticism of the medical community for being inconsistent and hypocritical. What does an ethical analysis reveal?Page
Genomic Findings on Human Behavior and Social Outcomes: FAQs
CONTENTS Genomic Studies of Educational Traits & Outcomes Genomic Studies of Social and Environmental Factors Genomic Studies of Psychological and Psychiatric Behaviors Genomic Studies of Sexual Behaviors Polygenic Embryo Selection...Read “Genomic Findings on Human Behavior and Social Outcomes: FAQs”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Immigrant Health in the Public Charge Era: 15 Essential Articles
The public charge rule went into effect nationwide yesterday, formalizing the “public charge era” that began when the draft rule was leaked three years ago. The rule jeopardizes eligibility for legal permanent residency if applicants are deemed public charges based on even short-term use of federally funded programs, such as health insurance, housing subsidies, or food stamps. Anticipation of the rule has had chilling effects on the behavior of immigrants, who have avoided or withdrawn from health-related programs for which they are eligible. What follows is a selected bibliography designed to support learning and progress on immigrant health in a complex policy environment.Read “Immigrant Health in the Public Charge Era: 15 Essential Articles”
Page
Terms of Use
This Website (“Website”) is an online information and communications service provided by The Hastings Center (“The Center,” “we” or “our”). Please carefully read the following Terms of Use before using...Page
Opt-out preferences
Page
Transcript: Re-Opening the Nation: Privacy, Surveillance and Digital Tools for Contact Tracing
Bioethics Forum Essay
After the Anniversary of Covid, Reckoning with Many New Normals
Anniversaries are complicated. In rehabilitation psychology, the anniversary of an accident that caused a brain or spinal cord injury can be a time for profound gratitude and for grief. Now that we have passed the one-year anniversary of the Covid pandemic, each of us continues to deal with the repercussions and wondering what the "new normal" may look like.Read “After the Anniversary of Covid, Reckoning with Many New Normals”
Page
Resources
Our Mission–www.thehastingscenter.org/who-we-are/our-mission Our Publications-www.thehastingscenter.org/publications-resources Bioethics Timeline–www.thehastingscenter.org/bioethics-timeline/ Donate–https://www.thehastingscenter.org/support-our-work/online-giving/ Planned giving–https://www.thehastingscenter.org/make-a-gift/gift-planning/ LinkedIn–www.linkedin.com/company/the-hastings-center/ Facebook–www.facebook.com/hastingscenter/ Instagram–www.instagram.com/thehastingscenter/?hl=en Bluesky–www.bsky.app/profile/hastingscenter.bsky.social X–www.x.com/hastingscenter Threads–www.threads.net/@thehastingscenterBioethics Forum Essay
Vaccinated and Still Isolated: The Ethics of Overprotecting Nursing Home Residents
The pandemic is not over, but light is beginning to crest the horizon. Vaccination rates, especially among older adults and their caregivers, are rising. As we begin to relax physical...Read “Vaccinated and Still Isolated: The Ethics of Overprotecting Nursing Home Residents”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Cracks in the System: Lessons Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic
The United States leads the world in coronavirus cases and deaths. Although many people have called out the inadequacies of our health care system, Covid-19 has exposed the most significant shortcomings. The need for change can no longer be ignored. Here are three lessons from this pandemic that should be leveraged for change.Read “Cracks in the System: Lessons Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic”
Page
Advancing Housing & Health Equity for Older Adults
The Covid-19 RECAPP Report: Advancing Housing & Health Equity for Older Adults: Pandemic Innovations and Policy Ideas Report Summary and Recommendations This grant-funded collaborative research led by Nancy Berlinger of The...Bioethics Forum Essay
WHO-China Report on Covid: Important Step Forward, More to Be Done
The World Health Organization recently released a long-anticipated report on SARS-CoV-2 origins, based on 28 days of field research and site visits in China conducted jointly by 17 international and...Read “WHO-China Report on Covid: Important Step Forward, More to Be Done”
Page
Covid-19 Ethical Framework and Supplements
Ethical Framework for Health Care Institutions Responding to Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19); Guidelines for Institutional Ethics Services Responding to Covid-19:March 16, 2020An ethically sound framework for health care during public...Bioethics Forum Essay
Covid Doesn’t Justify Cutting Corners on Medical Interpretation
Many hospitals are providing incomplete or subpar professional medical interpretation to the patients who need it--many of whom are disproportionately affected by Covid.Read “Covid Doesn’t Justify Cutting Corners on Medical Interpretation”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Bringing Ethics into the Global Coronavirus Response
Covid-19 is a matter of public and global health ethics, and the pandemic is currently accelerating cooperation within and contributions from these fields. A meeting on June 27, hosted by the European Union and Global Citizen, is the latest example another global pledging event on June 27, will include governments and large institutions, as well as individuals and communities worldwide.Bioethics Forum Essay
“If the virus doesn’t kill us, the stress and anxiety will.” Immigrants during Covid
Growing isolation, financial challenges and disease burden during the Covid-19 pandemic threaten to worsen the mental health needs of the entire U.S. population. These challenges are heightened among immigrants with untreated chronic mental health conditions as they experience added psychological distress owing to harsh immigration policies and worsening structural barriers to health during the pandemic.Read ““If the virus doesn’t kill us, the stress and anxiety will.” Immigrants during Covid”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Freedom’s Just Another Word for . . . Restriction?
What tools does a university administration have at its disposal to shut up critics on its own faculty? The University of Minnesota wants to know. The university’s administration is exploring...Bioethics Forum Essay
Canada Confronts its Own “Tuskegee” Studies
Last summer’s revelations that malnourished Aboriginals in Canada served as unwitting and unprotected subjects in nutritional experiments in the 1940s and 1950s brought a sharp reaction–though the research took place...Bioethics Forum Essay
Nationalizing IRBs for Biomedical Research – and for Justice
I know that when my medical school sends us all an announcement that we’ve broken a record for funded research, I’m supposed to be happy. Wrong week for that. Shortly...Read “Nationalizing IRBs for Biomedical Research – and for Justice”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Using the Pandemic as an Excuse to Limit Abortion
Several states, including Ohio, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Iowa, and Oklahoma, declared abortion a nonessential service at some point during the pandemic, meaning that it was effectively banned until the crisis passed. Supporters of the policies maintain that abortion is an elective procedure whose medical resources are better off used in the fight against the pandemic. But abortion opponents have been taking advantage of the current circumstances to limit abortion access.Bioethics Forum Essay
Bioethics, Nazi Analogies, and the Coronavirus Pandemic
The year 2020 will be remembered as the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. But the pandemic was not alone in creating fear and dismay and raising ethical questions. Think of the rise in antisemitism, police violence against Black people, protests against immigration, and rallies by groups espousing Nazi slogans and symbols. Hate crimes, including murder, are the highest in years, according to the most recent FBI report, and were particularly aimed at Jews and Hispanics. Asian-Americans have been targeted as carriers of the so-called “China virus.”Read “Bioethics, Nazi Analogies, and the Coronavirus Pandemic”
COVID-19
Ethics Resources for Conducting Research in Public Health Emergencies
Read “Ethics Resources for Conducting Research in Public Health Emergencies”
HASTINGS CENTER REPORT
Responding to COVID-19: How to Navigate a Public Health Emergency Legally and Ethically
Lawrence O. Gostin, Eric A. Friedman, and Sarah A. Wetter [This article appears in the Hastings Center Report, March-April 2020] Few novel or emerging infectious diseases have posed such vital...Read “Responding to COVID-19: How to Navigate a Public Health Emergency Legally and Ethically”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Covid-19 in Argentina and the Abuse of Bioethics
Many Latin American countries are being devastated by excessive loss of life from Covid-19, many sectors of society falling below the poverty line, and health systems being overwhelmed. As collateral damage, some countries in the region are witnessing an eruption of populism and autocratic trends and an increasing erosion of already weak and unstable democracies. Can bioethics be a useful tool for managing this crisis? Argentina provides a case study.Bioethics Forum Essay
Why Health Care Workers Should Receive Priority Care for Covid-19
The Covid-19 pandemic has imposed tremendous risk on doctors, nurses, and other health care workers not seen in a century. It is time to reconsider prioritization of health care workers’ access to scare critical resources. Historically, for multiple reasons, health care workers have not been prioritized for access to medical care during a pandemic. However, given the unprecedented circumstances surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, it is justifiable to prioritize health care workers when all else is equal between two patients.Read “Why Health Care Workers Should Receive Priority Care for Covid-19”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Fear of Doing Too Much Too Soon or Too Little Too Late: Research on Covid-19
The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly affected the practice of clinical research. Researchers and IRBs have felt an urgency to respond more quickly than usual, aware that lives are at stake.Read “Fear of Doing Too Much Too Soon or Too Little Too Late: Research on Covid-19”
Page
How Should the Public Learn?
Principal Investigators: Bruce Jennings, Gregory Kaebnick, Mildred Solomon Co-Investigators: Michael Gusmano, Carolyn P. Neuhaus Funder: John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Democracy requires the capacity to receive information through...Page
Ethics and Aging
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: AgingThere is a steady rise in world population growth with the fastest proportional increase coming from the elderly. Technological advances in medicine...HASTINGS CENTER REPORT
Scarcity in the Covid-19 Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay
Confronting Disability Discrimination During the Pandemic
As hospitals and public health authorities devise triage protocols to allocate scarce critical-care resources during the Covid-19 pandemic, people with disabilities are expressing alarm that these protocols devalue them and exacerbate long-entrenched ableism in health care. Lawsuits alleging disability discrimination in have been filed in Washington and Alabama. The U.S. Office for Civil Rights is investigating disability discrimination complaints in triage protocols. The challenge is to develop protocols that will minimize discrimination in the health care system.Read “Confronting Disability Discrimination During the Pandemic”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Surrogate Decision-Making for Incarcerated Patients: A Pandemic-Inspired Call to Action
As Covid-19 continues to plague the United States, insufficient attention has been paid to the role that incarcerated persons play in the persistence of this pandemic and the work that...Read “Surrogate Decision-Making for Incarcerated Patients: A Pandemic-Inspired Call to Action”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Surprising Surge of Egg Freezing during the Pandemic Raises Ethical Questions
Contrary to the expectations of many fertility clinics, demand for egg freezing has increased sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting longstanding ethical concerns about egg freezing clinics.Read “Surprising Surge of Egg Freezing during the Pandemic Raises Ethical Questions”
Page
Online Giving
Please support our work. Founded over 50 years ago, The Hastings Center is the only independent bioethics research institute in the nation. That status—and our ability to identify key challenges,...Page
Online Giving
Please support our work. Founded over 50 years ago, The Hastings Center is the only independent bioethics research institute in the nation. That status—and our ability to identify key challenges,...Bioethics Forum Essay
Crowdfunding for Covid-Related Needs: Unfair and Inadequate
One-third of all new GoFundMe campaigns in the United States are for COVID-19-related needs. This shows where we have failed as a society. It is a makeshift response to institutional failures and not a fair or sustainable solution to crises.Read “Crowdfunding for Covid-Related Needs: Unfair and Inadequate”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Covid-19 Makes Clear that Bioethics Must Confront Health Disparities
With some reluctance, I’ve come to the sad realization the COVID-19 pandemic has been a stress test for bioethics, a field of study that intersects medicine, law, the humanities and the social sciences. As both a physician and medical ethicist, I arrived at this conclusion after spending months at what was once the epicenter of the pandemic: New York City. I was overseeing a 24/7 bioethics consultation service.Read “Covid-19 Makes Clear that Bioethics Must Confront Health Disparities”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Report from Sub-Saharan Africa: “When the Health Fundamentals Are Weak, Covid Will Expose You.”
The cries of millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa and in low- and middle-income countries elsewhere who are struggling to stay alive because of Covid-19 and the lockdowns call for us to revisit the conceptual framework of the human right to health.Bioethics Forum Essay
Efficacy is Relative in a Public Health Crisis: Evaluating the Next Wave of Covid-19 Vaccines
A third Covid vaccine candidate moving closer to potential FDA authorization is less effective than the two Covid vaccines already authorized in the United States. Is it ethical to offer a vaccine with lower efficacy? Is it ethical not to offer it in a public health emergency?Read “Efficacy is Relative in a Public Health Crisis: Evaluating the Next Wave of Covid-19 Vaccines”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Science in the Biden White House: Eric Lander, Alondra Nelson, and the Legacy of Lewis Thomas
Science has replaced populism in the White House. For the first time, the president's science advisor will be elevated to cabinet rank. There are other good omens, as well.Read “Science in the Biden White House: Eric Lander, Alondra Nelson, and the Legacy of Lewis Thomas”
Page
Advancing Social Justice, Health Equity, and Community
TRANSCRIPT: February 9, 2021 Hello, good afternoon. If you’re on the East Coast and welcome to the annual Daniel Callahan lecture, advancing social justice, health, equity and Community. We are...Read “Advancing Social Justice, Health Equity, and Community”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Social-Change Games Can Help Us Understand the Public Health Choices We Face
Before there was the Covid-19 pandemic, there was Pandemic. This tabletop game, in which players collaborate to fight disease outbreaks, debuted in 2007. Expansions feature weaponized pathogens, historic pandemics, zoonotic diseases, and vaccine development races. Game mechanics modelled on pandemic vectors provide multiple narratives: battle, quest, detection, discovery. There is satisfaction in playing “against” disease–and winning. Real pandemic is not as tidy as a game. But can games support understanding about the societal challenges we now face? Yes.Read “Social-Change Games Can Help Us Understand the Public Health Choices We Face”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Measure Twice and Cut Once: The Value of Health Care Ethicists in the Pandemic
The major success story of health care ethicists in the pandemic has been their role in establishing ventilator triage policies. But they have more to offer the C-suite of health care institutions.Read “Measure Twice and Cut Once: The Value of Health Care Ethicists in the Pandemic”
Bioethics Forum Essay
On Being an Elder in a Pandemic
Do the elderly have special obligations during a pandemic, that is, something more than the duty we all have for hand washing, social distancing, and so on? I believe the answer is, yes, and foremost among these is an obligation for parsimonious use of newly scarce and expensive health care resources.Bioethics Forum Essay
Is the Coronavirus Pandemic Accelerating Bioethics Nationalism?
The global crisis created by the coronavirus pandemic and the rush to create and distribute a vaccine widely hoped to be a “silver bullet” that can facilitate a return to “normalcy” threatens to upend seven decades of assumptions about bioethical norms.Read “Is the Coronavirus Pandemic Accelerating Bioethics Nationalism?”
Hastings Center News
Q & A with Vardit Ravitsky
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...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Broad Data Sharing in Genetic Research: Views of Institutional Review Board Professionals
Institutional review boards (IRBs) play a key role in ensuring that genetic research with humans meets ethical and regulatory standards. They are involved with issues such as how research participants...Read “Broad Data Sharing in Genetic Research: Views of Institutional Review Board Professionals”
Page
AHA and ABIMF join as sponsors of “Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities”
The American Hospital Association and the ABIM Foundation join with the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association as sponsors of January’s national summit on health equity, convened by...Read “AHA and ABIMF join as sponsors of “Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities””
Page
Ethics and Clinical Trials
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...Page
Covid-19 Ethical Framework and Supplements
Ethical Framework for Health Care Institutions Responding to Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19); Guidelines for Institutional Ethics Services Responding to Covid-19, March 16, 2020, https://www.thehastingscenter.org/ethicalframeworkcovid19/. Responding to Covid-19 as a Regional...Page
Job Announcement: Research Scholar
Description: This position offers a superb opportunity for an early career, mid-career, or established scholar to devote themselves to research and public outreach on questions of national and international significance....Bioethics Forum Essay
The Americans with Disabilities Act at 30: A Cause for Celebration During Covid-19?
A central mandate of the ADA is to make the goods of society accessible to people with disabilities and overcome their segregation in civil society through reasonable accommodation that allows them to go to work, live with their neighbors, and avoid institutionalization. But let’s not delude ourselves with historic sentimentality as disability law is placed under tremendous stress by the pandemic.Read “The Americans with Disabilities Act at 30: A Cause for Celebration During Covid-19?”
Page
TRANSCRIPT: Communicating Ethical Challenges in Crises
Novmber 15, 2022 Transcription by machine — may contain errors Elizabeth Lanphier So thank you all for being here today. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to this inaugural session...Read “TRANSCRIPT: Communicating Ethical Challenges in Crises”
Bioethics Forum Essay
A Student’s Perspective: Universities Must Require Vaccination
Colleges and universities have an ethical obligation to mandate covid vaccines to protect the health and futures of both their students and the larger communities, in addition to promoting equality through education.Read “A Student’s Perspective: Universities Must Require Vaccination”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Against Personal Ventilator Reallocation
Personal ventilators used by people with disabilities should not reallocated to people with Covid-19. Triage protocols should be immediately clarified and explicitly state that personal ventilators will be protected in all cases.Page
The Hastings Center Beneficence Society
Credited by many as having founded the field of bioethics, The Hastings Center has invested more than 50 years addressing complex challenges at the intersection of health, science, and technology—including issues of aging...Page
Ethics and Abortion
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: AbortionA central philosophical question in the abortion debate concerns the moral status of the embryo and fetus. Public opinion on abortion falls...Bioethics Forum Essay
Hastings, Botswana, and Edinburgh: Bioethics Meets Detective Fiction
In the bioethics world, all roads eventually lead to Hastings, whether that means the Center in Garrison, N.Y., or Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., where the Center was born in 1969 and lived...Read “Hastings, Botswana, and Edinburgh: Bioethics Meets Detective Fiction”
Page
ANA and AMA join AAMC and The Hastings Center as sponsors of “Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities”
NEW YORK/SILVER SPRING/CHICAGO, NOVEMBER 9 – The American Nurses Association and the American Medical Association join The Hastings Center, a global ethics leader, and the Association of American Medical Colleges Center...Hastings Center News
Relational Public Health: Pandemic Policies that Support Health Equity
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,...Read “Relational Public Health: Pandemic Policies that Support Health Equity”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethics of Emergency Use Authorization During the Pandemic
The Food and Drug Administration's rigorous guidance for an emergency use authorization of a Covid vaccine was met by resistance from the White House, since some of the terms would make it virtually impossible to issue a vaccine-related emergency authorization before Election Day. Understanding the ethical dimensions of issuing it for a vaccine can provide clarity on the necessity of the FDA’s stringent guidelines.Read “Ethics of Emergency Use Authorization During the Pandemic”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Individual Freedom or Public Health? A False Choice in the Covid Era
When scientists first suggested population-wide social distancing as the only feasible way to suppress Covid-19, they were the first to admit it may not work in a free society. We are now months into placing mass restrictions on human behavior to suppress a virus that lacks an effective vaccine or treatment. Now is the time to ask: is this the authoritarian nightmare many feared, or will freedom and democracy survive Covid-19?Read “Individual Freedom or Public Health? A False Choice in the Covid Era”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Covid-19 Vaccination Certificates: Prospects and Problems
Now, with limited distribution of vaccines with varying degrees of efficacy there is renewed interest in immunity passports; more accurately described as vaccination certificates. What remains to be determined is who may use this documentation for what purpose.Read “Covid-19 Vaccination Certificates: Prospects and Problems”
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes 13 New Fellows
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Why I Support Age-Related Rationing of Ventilators for Covid-19 Patients
As a 71-year-old bioethicist, I consider rationing mechanical ventilation based on age to be one morally relevant criterion during the Covid-19 pandemic.Read “Why I Support Age-Related Rationing of Ventilators for Covid-19 Patients”
Page
Transcript | Vaccine Access, Vaccine Hesitancy: Challenges to Herd Immunity
A HASTINGS CENTER CONVERSATION WITH RHEA BOYD, MAYA GOLDENBERG, AND MILDRED SOLOMON The Hastings Center hosted “Vaccine Access, Vaccine Hesitancy: Challenges to Herd Immunity,” an online discussion of the ethical issues related...Read “Transcript | Vaccine Access, Vaccine Hesitancy: Challenges to Herd Immunity”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Genomic Research with Organs and Tissues Originating from Transplant Donors: Ethical Considerations for the GTEx Project
Human biospecimens are essential to uncovering the basis of human health and disease. Each year, millions of biospecimens are collected from both living and deceased donors for a variety of...Page
Request for Proposals from Fundraising Consultants
The Hastings Center invites proposals from fundraising consultants experienced in leading feasibility studies and strategically planning and advising nonprofit organizations in conducting endowment-focused campaigns. Fundraising consultants who identify as members...Bioethics Forum Essay
Teaching Medical Ethics During the Pandemic
Despite the disruptive changes to my undergraduate medical ethics class this semester, my students have learned a lot about the paradox that the coronavirus presents: it is an unprecedented event, beyond the experience of nearly everyone alive today, and yet it puts on grim display the well-known problems of inequality that chronically plague the United States. Since week six of the semester, I have readjusted each unit on the syllabus to address some of the ethical issues that Covid-19 has brought to the fore, familiar challenges that have been stressed and distorted in astonishing ways by the pandemic.Hastings Center News
Ethics and Pandemic Policies: Democracy in Crisis
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...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Implementing Single IRB Review of Multisite Research: Lessons Learned from the National Children’s Study
Abstract: In keeping with recent regulatory and policy requirements, a large proportion of multisite studies will be using a single institutional review board (IRB) of record. Further research is needed...Page
Hastings Center Report Press Kit
Latest Issue Access content from the latest issue and archives here. Editors Gregory E. Kaebnick, Editor kaebnickg@thehastingscenter.org 845-424-4040, ext. 227 Laura Haupt, Managing Editor hauptl@thehastingscenter.org 845-424-4040, ext. 212 Nora Porter, Art Director portern@thehastingscenter.org...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 2-7-13 Hastings Center Resources Chart Progress in Debate over Medical Research with Animals
(Garrison, NY) The scientific and ethical debate over the use of animals in medical research has raged for years, but perspectives are shifting, viewpoints are becoming more nuanced, and new...Page
Ethics & Human Research Press Kit
Latest Issue Access content from the latest issue here. Editors Karen J. Maschke, Editor maschkek@thehastingscenter.org Julie Chibbaro, Managing Editor hauptl@thehastingscenter.org Nora Porter, Art Director, Assistant Editor portern@thehastingscenter.org About the Journal Ethics...Bioethics Forum Essay
A Doctor Confronts the Burden of Judgment during the Pandemic
Is it wrong for doctors to judge their patients’ choices? I have reflected on this question while being on the frontline of the Covid-19 pandemic in New York City. Health...Read “A Doctor Confronts the Burden of Judgment during the Pandemic”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Why I Don’t Support Age-Related Rationing During the Covid Pandemic
Some bioethicists support age-related rationing of ventilators during the Covid-19 pandemic as a way to save the most lives. But that goal might be better realized without strict age cutoffs.Read “Why I Don’t Support Age-Related Rationing During the Covid Pandemic”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Resilience and the Twin Medical Catastrophes of War and Pandemic
As I sit here in my office at the Slovak Medical University in Bratislava, my colleagues are experiencing great moral anguish because of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. Simultaneously, we are also confronting the Omicron wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. The war complicates and burdens health care here and in other border nations exponentially, and especially so in combination with the pandemic.Read “Resilience and the Twin Medical Catastrophes of War and Pandemic”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Committing to Fight Racism
We have reached a very sad, painful moment in the United States. It feels like a cascade of calamities, one compounding the next. An infectious disease pandemic that we cannot yet cure has precipitated an economic crisis. An episode of police brutality against a black man has added the name George Floyd to a long list of victims of unfair policing practices in black communities. Bioethicists have not been doing enough in our professional capacities to actively denounce or address the persistent problems of structural racism. We invite our fellow bioethics colleagues to join us in candid, uncomfortable conversations about what we can and should be doing differently.Bioethics Forum Essay
We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us
In its early days, bioethics emphasized patient autonomy in the doctor-patient relationship. But patient autonomy is not the be-all and end-all principle to follow in all health care settings. Especially in lethal, airborne infectious disease pandemics.Bioethics Forum Essay
Treating Gun Violence as a Public Health Threat: Not Exactly What We Meant
This week, the United States saw two momentous public health events: one million deaths attributed to Covid and the 198th mass shooting of the year. Both the pandemic and gun shootings are threats to public health that are not being adequately addressed.Read “Treating Gun Violence as a Public Health Threat: Not Exactly What We Meant”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Denying Ventilators to Covid-19 Patients with Prior DNR Orders is Unethical
Previously-stated DNR status would seem irrelevant to ventilator allocation, and yet some existing and proposed guidelines for triage during a public health emergency list DNR status in the list of criteria for excluding patients from getting ventilators or other life-saving health care. This approach is in direct opposition to the generally agreed-upon goal of maximizing the number of survivors, and could result in confusion and public mistrust of the health care system.Read “Denying Ventilators to Covid-19 Patients with Prior DNR Orders is Unethical”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Unresolved Grief is Eating Away at Us
In most ways, 2023 was a return to normal. Schools were fully back in person; hybrid work was old hat; travel rebounded. But people are easily agitated. I think in our desire to regain a sense of normalcy we have not grieved properly for the losses and hardships of the past four years.Bioethics Forum Essay
I Was Never “Just” a Visitor
Caregivers are not visitors. Hospital policies that restrict visits from family caregivers can harm patients.Bioethics Forum Essay
Omicron, the Legacy of Renée Fox, and the Uncertain Practice of Medicine
Like the pandemic, uncertainty, growing confidence, and the return of doubt come in waves. The Omicron variant is just the latest twist in this plot.Read “Omicron, the Legacy of Renée Fox, and the Uncertain Practice of Medicine”
Page
Transcript: Critical Moment in Bioethics
This transcript automatically generated by machine and may contain errors Dani Pacia (she/her): hi everyone on behalf of the Hastings Center welcome to a critical moment in bioethics a webinar...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 02.15.11 Welcome Back to the Expanded Health Care Cost Monitor Blog
(Garrison, NY) The Hastings Center has relaunched the Health Care Cost Monitor and expanded its scope. Originally created to fill a void by focusing on health care costs as a component of...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 02.15.11 Welcome Back to the Expanded Health Care Cost Monitor Blog”
Page
Ways To Give
Advances in health, science, and technology raise profound ethical questions. Facts alone will not provide answers. Today more than ever, we need to identify the values at stake, listen to...Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 02.21.12 Role Reversal – Bioethicist interviews reporter on end of life
(Garrison, NY) Daniel Callahan, bioethicist and cofounder of the Hastings Center, has not only written about end-of-life issues for more than 40 years, he has also been interviewed by countless...Read “MEDIA ADVISORY: 02.21.12 Role Reversal – Bioethicist interviews reporter on end of life”
COVID-19
COVID-19: Supporting Ethical Care and Responding to Moral Distress in a Public Health Emergency
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Resumes Visiting Scholars Program
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...Page
New in the Hastings Center Report: Crisis Standards of Care, September-October 2021 issue
Press release HCR September-October 2021 LH New in the Hastings Center Report: Crisis Standards of Care, September-October 2021 issue As Covid spreads and leaves intensive care units at or near capacity...Read “New in the Hastings Center Report: Crisis Standards of Care, September-October 2021 issue”
Page
TRANSCRIPT: Anti-Black Racism, Health & Health Care
This transcript was generated by computer and may contain errors. Aashna Lal, The Hastings Center Thank you all for joining us today. Welcome to anti-black racism, health and health care....Page
Press Release: Health Equity, Racism, and This Moment in Time
PRESS RELEASE Contact: Susan Gilbert For Immediate Release 1-845-424-4040, ext. 244 gilberts@thehastingscenter.org Health Equity, Racism, and This Moment in TimeHastings Center online event next week The...Read “Press Release: Health Equity, Racism, and This Moment in Time”
Page
New Guidance for Middle-Tier Covid-19 Vaccine Allocation Focuses on Equity and Effectiveness in Reaching High-Risk Populations
PRESS RELEASE Contact: Susan Gilbert For Immediate Release 1-845-424-4040, ext. 244 communications@thehastingscenter.org New Guidance for Middle-Tier Covid-19 Vaccine Allocation Focuses on Equity and Effectiveness in Reaching High-Risk Populations Ethical Considerations...From Bioethics Briefings
Racism and Health Equity
Framing the Issue Racism has been declared a threat to public health by public health and medical organizations like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Medical...From Bioethics Briefings
Disaster Planning and Public Health
Framing the Issue Disasters happen. Coping with them and recovering and rebuilding afterward are nothing new. Systematic, evidence-based advance planning and preparedness are more novel, however, and seeing disasters as...Bioethics Forum Essay
Three Lessons from Leah
Leah Zallman's meticulous research helps us all to tell the story of what immigrants give to this nation and what they should receive from this nation.Page
Ethics and the Family Caregiving
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Family Caregiving The central philosophical question in family caregiving is how to best support infrastructures of care in times where changes in...Page
Bioethics for Aging Societies
For decades, bioethics scholarship, empirical research, and recommendations concerning older adults has focused on decisions and care in patients nearing the end of life. Until recently, bioethics work on aging...Page
Hastings Center Report Submission Guidelines
General Manuscript Submission and Review The Hastings Center Report takes a broad understanding of bioethics. We welcome manuscript submissions that address social and ethical issues in health care, the life sciences, and...Hastings Center News
TRANSCRIPT – Breakthrough or Breakdown: Should the FDA Have Approved the New Alzheimer’s Drug?
[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?...Bioethics Forum Essay
Hacking Ventilators in a Pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to test and occasionally overwhelm health care institutions. Many practitioners may face the ethically challenging scenario of having to ration ventilators while triaging patients in “crisis care.” Ventilator shortages have led to innovative ventilator design “hacks.” Are these improvised ventilators ethical?Bioethics Forum Essay
Sustaining Clinical Empathy During the Pandemic
As Covid-19 continues to spread throughout the United States, doctors, nurses, and oth-er clinicians are facing unmistakable tragedies. But something less perceptible is afoot. Empathy in medicine is under siege.Bioethics Forum Essay
Responding to Zika: Ethical Challenges of Zoonotic Diseases
The World Health Organization will hold an emergency committee meeting on the pandemic reemergence of Zika virus and the explosive increase in reported cases of congenital microcephaly in Brazil possibly linked to...Read “Responding to Zika: Ethical Challenges of Zoonotic Diseases”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Contemporary Circus Draws on Ethics to Support Diversity
Even though the circus exists in the same world as theater and movies, it has been largely exempt from public criticism, apart from accusations of animal cruelty. But under the broad rubric of “contemporary circus,” this familiar entertainment genre is distancing itself from its past and creating a new and vibrant art form. And underlying this transformation is an ethical commitment to social justice, inclusion, and equity.Read “Contemporary Circus Draws on Ethics to Support Diversity”
Our Team
Nancy Berlinger
Nancy Berlinger is a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center and a Hastings Center fellow. Her training is in the humanities. Her current scholarship and empirical research focus on...Hastings Center News
Caste Author Isabel Wilkerson to Keynote National Forum, “Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities.”
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...Page
Writers’ Guidelines for Clinical Ethics Cases for Hastings Bioethics Forum
The purpose of this series is to illustrate how clinical ethicists analyze, process, and address complex cases. The primary author of each essay should be a clinical ethicist (individual, team,...Read “Writers’ Guidelines for Clinical Ethics Cases for Hastings Bioethics Forum”
Page
Caste Author Isabel Wilkerson to Keynote National Forum, “Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities.”
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
COVID: Collective of Voices in Distress
Bioethics Forum Essay
Flattening the Curve, Then What?
Bioethics Forum Essay
Coronavirus and the Crisis of Trust
Influenza and coronavirus cause similar symptoms probably through similar modes of transmission. What is unique about coronavirus is that misinformation, missteps, conspiracies, and cover-ups have left their mark on public trust.Bioethics Forum Essay
Moving On from Covid? Immunocompromised People Can’t
The best case scenario for immunocompromised people like me would be universal masking in all public spaces. But I am willing to compromise.Bioethics Forum Essay
Rugged American Individualism is a Myth, and It’s Killing Us
The American myth of rugged individualism, which often means “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps,” is outdated, was never completely accurate. It is on full display during the coronavirus pandemic, contributing to cases and deaths.Read “Rugged American Individualism is a Myth, and It’s Killing Us”
Bioethics Forum Essay
On Being a Foster Parent During Covid
I knew that being a foster parent would be demanding, but I was unprepared for the extent of the challenges, which were exacerbated by the pandemic.Bioethics Forum Essay
C.D.C.’s Latest Mask Guidance: Science, Politics, and Public Health
The C.D.C.'s latest policy guidance that people who have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus virus no longer need to wear face masks indoors gets the science right, but policymaking wrong.Read “C.D.C.’s Latest Mask Guidance: Science, Politics, and Public Health”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Parents, Covid, and Trauma-Informed Choices
As the parent of a child under 5 years old, I am worried about what lies ahead for kids and Covid-19. The more contagious Delta variant is widely circulating, infecting...Bioethics Forum Essay
Instead of Vaccine Passports, Let’s Push for Global Justice in Vaccine Access
In Costa Rica, where I live, only 24% of the population has received at least one vaccine dose because we have received very small amounts of vaccines. The Costa Rican president suggested that every person who can travel to the U.S. to get the jab, should do it. Vaccine tourism, then, seems to be another promising business opportunity for the powerful countries that have accumulated vaccines instead of redistributing them soon and fairly.Read “Instead of Vaccine Passports, Let’s Push for Global Justice in Vaccine Access”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Who Will Be There to Care If There Are No More Nurses?
The pandemic has laid bare the significant shortcomings of a health system rooted in an unsustainable financial model that exploits the physical and emotional labor of its nurses.Read “Who Will Be There to Care If There Are No More Nurses?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The CDC’s Misguided Medical Masking Policy
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.Bioethics Forum Essay
DACA at 10: More, Please
DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, has been with us for 10 years. Granting a work permit and a renewable two-year stay of deportation to undocumented youth who have grown up in the United States turned out to have enormous benefits for them and for our nation.Hastings Center News
Remembering Nancy Neveloff Dubler (1941-2024)
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Housing an Aging Society: Five Priorities
While home and neighborhood environments matter to all people, older age brings particular considerations related to housing cost, safety and accessibility, neighborhood livability, links between the home and supportive services,...Bioethics Forum Essay
Islamic Ethics, Covid-19 Vaccination, and the Concept of Harm
Vaccine hesitancy is a concern around the world, but negative attitudes among Muslims in particular toward some coronavirus vaccines have been the focus of attention in the media. Some scholars in Asia recently issued fatwa against the Chinese Covid-19 vaccine. Media coverage has characterized the Muslim world as a hotspot for vaccine hesitancy, but experts point out biases in this coverage and explain the underlying reasons.Read “Islamic Ethics, Covid-19 Vaccination, and the Concept of Harm”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Popular Culture and Bioethics: Severance
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.Page
Transcript | Re-Opening the Nation: What Values Should Guide Us?
Read “Transcript | Re-Opening the Nation: What Values Should Guide Us?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself: Building Community During Covid
The opposition to mask and vaccine mandates transcends the issue of individual liberty.Read “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself: Building Community During Covid”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Studying Covid Vaccines in the Youngest Kids
Children have suffered both physical and mental illness during the pandemic. Nearly 200 children in the United States have died. Acute mental health crises increased during the pandemic. Getting children immunized is the best way to get back to normal. We suggest an option that would permit children under 5 to be vaccinated without waiting until traditional prospective randomized trials can be completed.Bioethics Forum Essay
Back to School: The Covid Vaccination Choice
It’s back-to-school season in the United States, the third one during the Covid pandemic, but the first in which all schoolchildren are eligible for Covid vaccines. Yet fewer than a third of children ages 5 to 11 are fully vaccinated, while the percentage of those under 5 who have started–let alone completed–vaccination is in the low single digits. Why? The answers are complicated.Bioethics Forum Essay
Two Cheers for Choosing Wisely
The Choosing Wisely campaign is one of the most exciting experiments in health care in quite a while. If it lives up to its potential, Choosing Wisely could prevent some of the...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Research Ethics Committees in Nigeria: A Survey of Operations, Functions, and Needs
Heightened global commitment to research on diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria has led to increased research over the past decade in many African countries, including Nigeria. This increase...Read “Research Ethics Committees in Nigeria: A Survey of Operations, Functions, and Needs”
From Bioethics Briefings
Conflict of Interest in Biomedical Research and Clinical Practice
Framing the Issue Conflict of interest is a broad term to describe situations where professional judgement risks being compromised by secondary interests. Research and clinical care both involve judgment about...Read “Conflict of Interest in Biomedical Research and Clinical Practice”
Bioethics Forum Essay
False Hope About Coronavirus Treatments
While patients can and do recover from coronavirus infections, there are currently no approved treatments that are known to work against COVID-19.Page
PRESS RELEASE: 08.15.12 Study Finds Pregnant Women Support Some Participation in Research
(Garrison, NY) A new study involving pregnant women who enrolled in randomized vaccine trials challenges the longstanding reluctance to conduct research with pregnant women because of ethical concerns about the...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 08.15.12 Study Finds Pregnant Women Support Some Participation in Research”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Religion During the Coronavirus Pandemic: Islamic Bioethical Perspectives
Congregational rituals of religious communities around the world have attracted attention for their possible threat of spreading the coronavirus. Negative Media coverage has generally depicted members of religious communities as more or less “reckless” groups whose “fanatic” convictions can make them harm others from inside or outside their religious traditions. However, what hasn’t been discussed is how this issue should be approached as a complex bioethical issue that concerns people worldwide. With the beginning of Ramadan, paying attention to the nuances and complexities of this issue becomes especially pressing.Read “Religion During the Coronavirus Pandemic: Islamic Bioethical Perspectives”
Our Team
Lin Tarrant
Lin Tarrant joined the Hastings Center in 2008. She has worked in the not-for-profit sector for over 25 years including Direct Mail Manager at Guiding Eyes for the Blind and...Page
Gift Planning
Philanthropy typically accounts for 45% of The Hastings Center’s annual revenue. Popular ways to give include Cash, Check, Securities, DAFs, or IRAs. However, gift planning (sometimes referred to as planned,...Page
Welcome to Hastings on the Hill
Inaugural Topic: Health AI AI is changing the landscape of health care delivery and biomedical research. It carries great promise but also generates deep ethical and social concerns. Bioethics, the...Page
Privacy Policy
Updated March 2024 The Hastings Center is dedicated to service in the field of bioethics. A key component of that service is an unwavering commitment to privacy. For over 50...Page
Press Release: Hastings Fellow Alondra Nelson Named to Key Role
PRESS RELEASE Contact: Susan Gilbert For Immediate Release 1-845-424-4040, ext. 244 communications@thehastingscenter.org Hastings Fellow Alondra Nelson Named to Key Role NEW YORK, February 22 –Alondra Nelson, a Hastings Center Fellow,...Read “Press Release: Hastings Fellow Alondra Nelson Named to Key Role”
Gene Editing & Human Flourishing
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the goals of the program? Secondary school educators will complete the program with greater comfort identifying the ethical issues present in the genetic topics they teach, and prepared...Page
Programs for Students and Visiting Scholars
The Hastings Center offers several programs for students and visiting scholars. For more information about any of these programs, please contact programs@thehastingscenter.org. Please include the name of the program of...Page
FAQs on Human Genomic Studies Submission Guidelines
This guide helps authors submitting materials to “FAQs on Human Genomic Studies” and outlines basic criteria for inclusion in the repository. Have a question? Contact the editorial team via genomicsfaq@thehastingscenter.org...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 10.24.12 Survival of the Affordable Care Act Assessed in New Commentaries
(Garrison, NY) As the presidential candidates clash over the fate of the Affordable Care Act, a set of seven essays by leading legal experts, economists, and scholars examines the implications...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 10.24.12 Survival of the Affordable Care Act Assessed in New Commentaries”
Page
Ethics & Human Research Submission Guidelines
Aims & Scope Ethics & Human Research (formerly IRB: Ethics & Human Research) aims to foster critical analysis of issues in science and health care that have implications for human...Page
Press Release: Omenn & Darling Gift to Bolster Trust in Scientific Innovation
PRESS RELEASE Contact: Susan Gilbert For Immediate Release 1-845-424-4040, ext. 244 communications@thehastingscenter.org Omenn & Darling gift to bolster trust in scientific innovation February 19, 2021. Preeminent science researcher and science...Read “Press Release: Omenn & Darling Gift to Bolster Trust in Scientific Innovation”
Page
Report Finds Breakdown in Civic Discourse Threatens U.S. Democracy
PRESS RELEASE Contact: Susan Gilbert For Immediate Release 1-845-424-4040, ext. 244 communications@thehastingscenter.org NEW YORK, February 25 – A new report released by The Hastings Center, the leading bioethics research institute,...Read “Report Finds Breakdown in Civic Discourse Threatens U.S. Democracy”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 03.12.12 The Hastings Center Names Mildred Z. Solomon Next President
(Garrison, NY) The Board of Directors of The Hastings Center announced today that Dr. Mildred Z. Solomon, Senior Director for Implementation Science at the Association of American Medical Colleges and...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 03.12.12 The Hastings Center Names Mildred Z. Solomon Next President”
Page
Job Announcement: Project Manager-Research Assistant
Page
PRESS RELEASE 10-01-2018: Announcing Ethics & Human Research
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), a...Read “PRESS RELEASE 10-01-2018: Announcing Ethics & Human Research”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Amid the Pandemic and Racial Injustice, Greater Empathy in Medical School
Empathy does not need to dissipate as we endure medical training. Both the pandemic and the national reckoning over racial injustice and police brutality have touched every aspect of life as we know it, and medical training and education have been no exception.Read “Amid the Pandemic and Racial Injustice, Greater Empathy in Medical School”
Bioethics Forum Essay
U.S. and Canada: Being Good Neighbors in the Pandemic
Canada has a fraction of the number of cases of Covid-19 as the U.S. Canadians feel vulnerable. But Canadians and Americans need to find ways to build and maintain trust within and across our borders.Read “U.S. and Canada: Being Good Neighbors in the Pandemic”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Please Don’t (Need to) Use My Work
I helped develop guidelines for the ethical allocation of scarce resources during a public health emergency, such as a pandemic..I hope my contributions have an impact. I especially hope to see my work used since it emphasizes the perspectives of minority and underserved communities, who tend to have less voice in health policy. But now I find myself dreading the use of my work.Bioethics Forum Essay
Pathogens and Humans
In a 1988 essay on pandemics, Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg wrote, “We have no guarantee that the natural evolutionary competition of viruses with the human species will always find ourselves the winner.”Bioethics Forum Essay
Beyond the Covid Crisis—A New Social Contract with Public Health
Covid-19 is teaching us the stern lesson that economic well-being and health justice are two sides of the same coin. To weather pandemics and restore the social contact that economic life demands, we need to sign a new social contract with public health.Read “Beyond the Covid Crisis—A New Social Contract with Public Health”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Addyi Rises Again
Addyi, a drug that made a splash when it was approved in the summer of 2015 as the first “female Viagra,” is back. Its rise, fall, and rise again is...Bioethics Forum Essay
On Naming Names
No names will be named in this essay. Which I guess makes it philosophy. Technically I am trained to do philosophy. I got my masters and my Ph.D. in a...Bioethics Forum Essay
Diving Deeper into Amazon Alexa’s HIPAA Compliance
Amazon.com made waves in health care when it announced that its Alexa Skills Kit, a suite of tools for building voice programs, would be HIPAA compliant. Using the Alexa Skills Kit, companies could build voice experiences for Amazon Echo devices that communicate personal health information with patients. Alexa’s various roles in health care stand to confuse (or potentially exploit) users.Bioethics Forum Essay
Bloomberg’s Health Legacy: What Inflames Consumer Passions in the Food Wars?
After the Hastings Center Report published my essay on Mayor Bloomberg’s health legacy — with its key ideas spread through the popular media (here and here) — vitriolic messages streamed...Read “Bloomberg’s Health Legacy: What Inflames Consumer Passions in the Food Wars?”
Page
Universities of the Witwatersrand and Johannesburg
Giving a Voice to African Thought in Medical Research Ethics 3 – 5 December 2015 Boardroom, Phillip V Tobias Health Sciences Building,University of the Witwatersrand Corner of York and St...Bioethics Forum Essay
A Responsible Death
As debates continue about the decisions people make about how to die, I wish to draw wider attention to the death of Paul Drier. There was little extraordinary about his death. He was a widower, had suffered from multiple health problems, and had been on kidney dialysis for 18 months. Considered to be too ill to qualify for a transplant, he decided to end dialysis. Two aspects of Mr. Drier’s death seem worth putting on record for bioethicists to remember.Bioethics Forum Essay
Bad Vibrations
In “The Rhetoric of Dehumanization: An Analysis of Medical Reports of the Tuskegee Syphilis Project,” Martha Solomon brilliantly demonstrates how the project’s researchers hid their work in plain sight. Specifically,...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
A Study to Evaluate the Effect of Investigator Attendance on the Efficiency of IRB Review
Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are challenged to review increasing volumes of proposed research studies while meeting high ethical and regulatory standards.1A growing literature has documented concerns about the IRB review...Read “A Study to Evaluate the Effect of Investigator Attendance on the Efficiency of IRB Review”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Legal but Unethical: Who Works on That?
It’s hard to say what is most horrifying in Carl Elliott’s report in the current issue of Mother Jones of a young man who died caught up in a pharma...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Continuing Ethics Review Practices by Canadian Research Ethics Boards
This study examined Canadian Research Ethics Board (REB) practices concerning continuing ethics review of approved studies. A mail-out questionnaire was used to elicit information from Canadian REB representatives about whether...Read “Continuing Ethics Review Practices by Canadian Research Ethics Boards”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Medicine Needs a Declaration of Independence from Cosmetic Procedures
What is medicine for? I found this question on my mind recently, not only because I had been discussing it with a group of thoughtful medical students to whom I...Read “Medicine Needs a Declaration of Independence from Cosmetic Procedures”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Pink Boys with Puppy Dog Tails
In my e-mail in-box a few weeks ago, I received a polite message from a woman named Sarah Hoffman who was writing to ask why I was being such a...Bioethics Forum Essay
X Marks Evolution: The Benefits of the “Indeterminate Sex” Passport Designator
Australia passed legislation in September giving transgender and intersex passport holders the option to identify themselves with an X for “indeterminate sex.” Navi Pillay, the United Nation’s high commissioner for...Read “X Marks Evolution: The Benefits of the “Indeterminate Sex” Passport Designator”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Time for the American Anthropological Association to Apologize
Last week, the journal Human Nature published via open access an article I wrote following a year of historical research. That article, “Darkness’s Descent on the American Anthropological Association: A...Read “Time for the American Anthropological Association to Apologize”
Page
Matching Gifts
Page
Voices in Bioethics from the Caribbean Basin/Voces en Bioética desde la Cuenca del Caribe
Table of contents/Tabla de contenidoBiographies/biografías Editors’ Note While the field of bioethics transcends disciplinary siloes and embraces diversity of thought, the field remains divided by language and, too often, wealth....Read “Voices in Bioethics from the Caribbean Basin/Voces en Bioética desde la Cuenca del Caribe”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Who Should Go First in Trials with Scarce Agents? The Views of Potential Participants
Demands from AIDS activists in the 1980s for access to drugs not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) resulted in multiple programs to increase access, including single-patient...Read “Who Should Go First in Trials with Scarce Agents? The Views of Potential Participants”
Page
The Hastings Center — Health, Science, and Technology Ethics
Read “The Hastings Center — Health, Science, and Technology Ethics”
Bioethics Forum Essay
COVID-19 and the Global Ethics Freefall
Since the initial outbreak in Wuhan last December, the national and global responses to COVID-19 have been in ethics freefall.Bioethics Forum Essay
Prioritize Health Care Workers for Ventilators? Not So Fast
In places where Covid-19 is increasing – and in preparation for a possible second wave of the pandemic-- hospitals are preparing to triage critical resources if necessary. Some are prioritizing health care workers for ventilators. We think this is a mistake.Read “Prioritize Health Care Workers for Ventilators? Not So Fast”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Should Covid Vaccination Status Be Used to Make Triage Decisions?
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to strain health systems’ capacity to provide adequate care for critically ill patients, should patients’ vaccination status be considered in making triage decisions? This question sparked debate recently after the leak of an internal memo of the North Texas Mass Critical Care Guideline Task Force that proposed using patients’ Covid-19 vaccination status as a factor to assign intensive care beds.Read “Should Covid Vaccination Status Be Used to Make Triage Decisions?”
Page
TRANSCRIPT: Unpacking Neglected Factors to Ensure Impact
February 7, 2023 Transcription by machine — may contain errors Elizabeth Lanphier Want to welcome you to today’s second installment of Bioethics with Bigger Impact. I’m Elizabeth Lanphier. I’m a coeditor of...Read “TRANSCRIPT: Unpacking Neglected Factors to Ensure Impact”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Overcoming Covid Vaccine Hesitancy Among Minnesota’s Somali Muslims
When Covid-19 vaccines first became available last year, Somali Muslims in Minnesota--the largest Somali Muslim population in North America-- were fearful and, consequently, their vaccination rate was low and their Covid-19 rate was high. But health professionals and community representatives worked together to understand and overcome their vaccine hesitancy.Read “Overcoming Covid Vaccine Hesitancy Among Minnesota’s Somali Muslims”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Bioethics in the Second Cold War
Bioethics is an integral part of the liberal international order intentionally developed after World War II. Following the Russian war on Ukraine there is every reason to believe that the set of norms and institutions that preserved peace in Europe through the first Cold War will be revised according to new assumptions that will structure international relations in a second Cold War.Bioethics Forum Essay
Capitalist Philanthropy and Vaccine Imperialism
The commitments made by the wealthiest countries to share Covid vaccines and funding for international cooperation mechanisms are crucial, but insufficient. They reflect the “securitization of health,” a 21st century phenomenon whereby states turn health issues into national security issues.Bioethics Forum Essay
Lessons from Covid-19: Why Treating Sick Patients is Bad Business for Hospitals
Hospitals in the United States are losing money taking care of patients with Covid-19. The pandemic casts a harsh spotlight on the misallocation of health care resources in the U.S.Read “Lessons from Covid-19: Why Treating Sick Patients is Bad Business for Hospitals”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Quality of Life? Suffering? Covid-19 Intensifies Challenges in Discussing Life-Sustaining Treatment
The pandemic magnified the inherent difficulty and stress of conversations involving life-sustaining treatment by forcing clinicians and patients to engage in life-altering discussions via telephone and video conference, restricting nonverbal communication and eye contact, and eliminating the benefit of simply having another person nearby in time of crisis.Hastings Center News
Hastings Center President Speaks on Systemic Racism, Health Inequities, and Covid-19
Read “Hastings Center President Speaks on Systemic Racism, Health Inequities, and Covid-19”
Bioethics Forum Essay
How Many Covid-19 Deaths Should We Accept?
President Biden recently declared that the Covid-19 “pandemic is over.” Some public health experts agreed with this assessment; others disagreed. What cannot be disputed is that nearly 12,000 Americans have...Bioethics Forum Essay
Immigrants, Health Inequities, and Social Citizenship in Covid-19 Response and Recovery
Read “Immigrants, Health Inequities, and Social Citizenship in Covid-19 Response and Recovery”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Covid Vaccine Patent Waivers are for Health Sovereignty
The United States, Russia, and China support temporary patent waivers for Covid vaccines. The waivers, which need support from other countries, would likely save lives in low- and middle-income countries.Read “Covid Vaccine Patent Waivers are for Health Sovereignty”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Making Vaccine Appointments Is Tearing Us Apart
The Covid-19 vaccine rollout is currently a hub of individual, sociopolitical, and ethical activity. As we watch the numbers of daily doses administered rising, we may feel engaged in a...Hastings Center News
Crisis Standards of Care: New in the Hastings Center Report
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...Read “Crisis Standards of Care: New in the Hastings Center Report”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Why We Need a Covid-19 Commission
Congress recently announced plans for an independent commission to investigate the facts and causes of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. This 1/6 Commission is to be modelled after the 9/11 Commission. A national commission to investigate the disaster that the Covid-19 virus has caused in America must also be launched.Bioethics Forum Essay
Quiet Quitting Undermines Human Flourishing
Quiet quitting, the trend in which people do only the minimum in their jobs, has captured attention in the news and on social media. More than half of U.S. workers are quiet quitting, according to a recent Gallup poll, and most of them are in their 20s and 30s. I was discussing this trend with my bioethics colleagues, and we considered the ethical implications for people’s well-being.Hastings Center News
Health Care Professionals’ Burnout During Covid
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...Hastings Center News
Impact of Racism on Health Framed in New Briefing
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Disabusing the Disability Critique of the New York State Task Force Report on Ventilator Allocation
I am a member of the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law and helped write its 2015 guidelines on the allocation of ventilators during a public health emergency. The position outlined by the Task Force report has been a point of confusion in the media. I don't believe that the Task Force recommendations discriminate against people with disabilities.Page
Solomon to Step Down as Hastings Center President
(JULY 18, 2022) – Hastings Center President Mildred Z. Solomon announced today that she plans to step down in June 2023, marking 11 years of leadership at the pioneering ethics...Bioethics Forum Essay
Do New York State’s Ventilator Allocation Guidelines Place Chronic Ventilator Users at Risk? Clarification Needed
There is a lack of clarity about the New York State Task Force guidelines on ventilator allocation. I believe disability rights concerns regarding the recommendations on chronic ventilator users are well-founded. This lack of clarity may cost lives.Hastings Center News
Health Equity Summit Recap
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...Page
Press Release: New in the Hastings Center Report: Ethical Challenges of the Opioid Crisis
The nationwide surge in drug abuse predates the Covid-19 pandemic but has risen to new highs during it. Causes of the crisis–physician prescribing habits and societal problems like poverty and...Read “Press Release: New in the Hastings Center Report: Ethical Challenges of the Opioid Crisis”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 4-30-2013 The Ethics of Knowledge: When Should Hazardous Scientific Information be Made Public?
(Garrison, NY) How can we best address the potential threat posed by “dual use” research – scientific findings that can be used for good or evil? An article and two...Bioethics Forum Essay
Report from China: Ethical Questions on the Response to the Coronavirus
Hastings Center fellows in China discuss ethical questions about the response to the spreading coronavirus.Read “Report from China: Ethical Questions on the Response to the Coronavirus”
Page
Hastings Center Names Vardit Ravitsky New President
March 29, 2023 — The Hastings Center Board of Trustees announced that Vardit Ravitsky, PhD, a leading bioethicist whose career has focused on the ethical, legal, and social implications of...SPECIAL EVENT
Re-Opening the Nation: What Values Should Guide Us?
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes 24 New Fellows
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...Page
Ethics and Enhancing Humans
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Enhancing Humans What counts as enhancement is not clear because what counts as normal is itself ambiguous. Enhancement technologies have the potential...Page
Press Release: 5/7/2013 Hastings Center Calls on Health Care Professionals and Organizations to Meet Standards for Good Care Near the End of Life
(Garrison, NY) People with chronic or life-threatening illnesses often experience problems with their care, including confusion and conflict over how to make good decisions, poor communication with care providers, inadequate...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 3-19-2013 Immigration Reform Needs to Address Access to Health Care
(Garrison, NY) With comprehensive immigration reform a priority for President Obama and gaining bipartisan and public support, there is a need and an opportunity to consider how the millions of...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 3-19-2013 Immigration Reform Needs to Address Access to Health Care”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 12.13.12 Over 65 Blog Focuses on Seniors Health and Security
(Garrison, NY) Against the backdrop of federal budget negotiations bearing on the future of Medicare and Social Security are ongoing concerns about an aging population: health, economic well-being, family needs,...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 12.13.12 Over 65 Blog Focuses on Seniors Health and Security”
Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 10.16.12 Hastings Center Adds New Online Resources on Undocumented Patients’ Access to Health Care
(Garrison, NY) Health care and immigration are two of the most contentious issues in American politics today, but in the first presidential debate neither of the candidates addressed the question...Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 05.17.12 Hastings Center launches website with resources on undocumented immigrants and access to health care
(Garrison, NY) Who are the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.? What are their greatest health care needs? How do they get health care now, and what are their...From Bioethics Briefings
Ethical Drug Pricing
Framing the Issue Many prescription drugs are prohibitively expensive. In the United States, brand-name prescription drug prices are higher than in other wealthy countries. New variants of drugs for...From Bioethics Briefings
Family Caregiving
Framing the Issue Families have always taken care of their ill and disabled relatives. Why should it be any different now? This disarmingly simple question often opens a policy discussion...Bioethics Forum Essay
Belief in a Just World: A Case Study in Public Health Ethics
Why did portraying a married, working, loving, family-oriented, and religious couple with a disabled child bring out consistently negative reactions among the public toward allowing this family access to government-subsidized...Read “Belief in a Just World: A Case Study in Public Health Ethics”
Page
Literature and Other Resources on Impact Assessment for Synthetic Biology
Websites and Online Introductions Synthetic Biology “Synthetic Biology,” by Michele S. Garfinkel, Drew Endy, Gerald Epstein, and Robert M. Friedman The Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center...Read “Literature and Other Resources on Impact Assessment for Synthetic Biology”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Promoting Research with Organ Transplant Patients
Abstract: Given the numerous questions related to patient selection, surgical technique, and posttransplant care requiring evidence-based answers, transplantation programs should be conducting research with patients waiting to receive an organ...Page
Ethics and Brain Injury
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Brain Injury: Neuroscience and Neuroethics Not long ago, patients with severe brain injury and no apparent consciousness were presumed to be in...Page
Common Genetic Variants Associated with Cognitive Performance Identified Using Proxy-Phenotype Method
This document was prepared by several of the co-authors of the paper and board members of the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium. For clarifications or additional questions, please contact: Daniel...From Bioethics Briefings
Medical Aid-in-Dying
Framing the Issue The question of whether severely ill suffering patients are entitled to a physician’s help to end their suffering by ending their lives has been debated since antiquity....Page
The Five People You Meet in a Pandemic—And What They Need from You Today
This bioethics background paper describes ethical decision-making during an influenza pandemic. Download the report for free.Read “The Five People You Meet in a Pandemic—And What They Need from You Today”
Bioethics Forum Essay
A Covid-19 Side Effect: Virulent Resurgence of Ageism
Of all the “isms,” ageism is arguably the hardest to address because old age neither a valued stage of life nor an identity that many claim. The coronavirus pandemic may have made that effort even harder.Read “A Covid-19 Side Effect: Virulent Resurgence of Ageism”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Resisting Public Health Measures, Then and Now
One of the most surprising aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic for those of us who teach the history of public health is how unwilling many Americans have been to adopt health measures to protect others. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, tens of millions of Americans traveled, despite the fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged them to stay home and the overall death rate from the coronavirus is approaching 300,000. Should recent events make us revisit aspects of the history of public health? And how can these stories inform future public health efforts during pandemics?From Bioethics Briefings
Quality Improvement Methods in Health Care
Framing the Issue The American health care system has serious problems with quality and safety. One effective way to attack these problems is through the methods of quality improvement (QI)....From Bioethics Briefings
Research in Resource-Poor Countries
Framing the Issue In the 1990s, the term “the 10/90 gap” was used to refer to the gross inequity that only about 10% of global spending on health research was...BIOETHICS & EQUITY
A Perilous Moment for Our Nation
Bioethics Forum Essay
Post-Covid Bioethics
Covid-19 is making bioethics more relevant than ever. The ethical dilemmas raised by the pandemic are urgent and heart-wrenching. Who should get a ventilator if we do not have enough? How can we protect the most vulnerable from discrimination in the face of difficult triage decisions? How do we weigh individual liberty against the public interest of keeping people confined? While such questions are not new for bioethicists, the need to answer them urgently, globally, and in very concrete settings, creates unprecedented circumstances. Is this an opportunity for bioethics to learn some important lessons? What should post-Covid bioethics look like?Bioethics Forum Essay
Reckoning with Anti-Black Racism in Bioethics: Key Takeaways
The field of bioethics has a moral responsibility to respond to the continued racial and health inequities confronting Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. Along with several colleagues, we formed an antiracism task force to interrogate that moral responsibility. Here are key takeaways from a recent panel discussion that we organized.Read “Reckoning with Anti-Black Racism in Bioethics: Key Takeaways”
Bioethics Forum Essay
When to Reopen the Nation is an Ethics Question—Not Only a Scientific One
As the world reels from the Covid-19 pandemic, two things have become very clear: the health impacts of the disease are devastating, but the aggressive social distancing policies currently being used to flatten the curve also have serious costs. As a result, the question of when and how to reopen the nation is on everyone’s mind. Do we open quickly in an effort to kick-start the economy? Or do we remain under lockdown as long as possible to stop the spread of the virus?Read “When to Reopen the Nation is an Ethics Question—Not Only a Scientific One”
Page
Securing Health in a Troubled Time
Forty million people live in poverty in the United States, a reality at odds with our great wealth and espoused principles. Health inequities, including dramatically decreased life expectancies and severe...Bioethics Forum Essay
Undocumented Immigrants and Covid-19 Vaccination
Willingness to be vaccinated is not the only factor that may reduce vaccination rates. Fear is a powerful deterrent for individuals in hidden populations, especially undocumented immigrants. Even if their work or other circumstances place them at high risk of infection, many would be unlikely to risk the consequences of coming forward to be vaccinated.Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethics Supports Seeking Population Immunity, Not Immunizing Priority Groups
Vaccine allocation guidelines that prioritize people at greatest risk of Covid-19 require considerable administrative work (sometimes taking weeks). This is creating a bottleneck that has resulted in doses stuck in freezers not in arms. There's a better, more ethical way to allocate vaccines.Read “Ethics Supports Seeking Population Immunity, Not Immunizing Priority Groups”
Hastings Center News
America’s Bioethicists and Health Care Leaders: Government Must Use Federal Powers To Fight COVID-19
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.Bioethics Forum Essay
The Price of Going Back to Work Too Soon
Bioethics Forum Essay
Human Challenge Studies for Covid-19 Vaccine: Questions about Benefits and Risks
Experts in infectious disease and public health warn that the Covid-19 pandemic will be with us until there is an effective vaccine, possibly 12 to 18 months in the future. This situation has given rise to calls for human challenge studies, in which healthy volunteers are injected with an experimental vaccine and then infected with the disease to test the vaccine’s efficacy. Is this ethically justifiable?Read “Human Challenge Studies for Covid-19 Vaccine: Questions about Benefits and Risks”
Page
Securing Health in a Troubled Time
Bioethics Forum Essay
“You Can See Your Loved One Now.” Can Visitor Restrictions During Covid Unduly Influence End-of-Life Decisions?
One of the factors considered most important by dying patients and their families is the opportunity to be together. For many of our hospitalized patients in palliative care, the presence of loved ones at the bedside is such a given that we don’t even address it explicitly in advance care planning discussions. So, it comes as no surprise that Covid- 19-related visitor restrictions affecting hospitalized patients might impact end-of-life decision-making, potentially in ways that are ethically problematic.Bioethics Forum Essay
Global Allocation of Coronavirus Vaccines
A Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech has received emergency authorization in the United States and has been authorized in the countries, and a vaccine by Moderna is likely to be authorized soon. In spite of this good news, at least for the first couple of years, Covid-19 vaccines will be a scarce resource. Because low-income countries are likely to lose out in the scramble to get access to them, there have been calls for global solidarity. While equitable allocation of vaccines around the world would be ideal, it is unrealistic as a near-term goal.Bioethics Forum Essay
The FDA and the Moral Distinction Between Killing and Letting Die
Why is the FDA dragging its feet in approving Covid vaccines for children under 12? Justifications lack moral weight.Read “The FDA and the Moral Distinction Between Killing and Letting Die”
Bioethics Forum Essay
After the Surge: Prioritizing the Backlog of Delayed Hospital Procedures
The rewards of social distancing are beginning to accrue in former hotspots such as Seattle, the New York metropolitan area, and the San Francisco Bay Area, where the number of new Covid-19 cases requiring hospitalization is declining. Assuming the rewards hold in the face of pressures to reopen the economy, hospitals will now face challenges of reopening their own nonpandemic services for patients whose elective surgeries and other procedures were postponed. Which patients should get priority?Read “After the Surge: Prioritizing the Backlog of Delayed Hospital Procedures”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Lawsuits of Last Resort: Employees Fight for Safe Workplaces during Covid-19
As more workplaces open up, a seldom-used legal action is being taken against employers charged with inadequately protecting employees from the coronavirus: public nuisance lawsuits.Read “Lawsuits of Last Resort: Employees Fight for Safe Workplaces during Covid-19”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Place in “Aging in Place”: Housing Equity in Late Life
Most older Americans want to age “in place” – in the community, not an institution. But there's a poor fit between our nation’s housing stock and our aging demographics.Read “The Place in “Aging in Place”: Housing Equity in Late Life”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Vaccination Discrimination Goes Against Nursing Ethics
Some health care providers are prioritizing patients who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 over those who are unvaccinated. This is unethical.Read “Vaccination Discrimination Goes Against Nursing Ethics”
Hastings Center News
New Recommendations Address Crisis of Physician Stress
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...Read “New Recommendations Address Crisis of Physician Stress”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Clinicians Have a Moral Duty to Care for All Patients–Including Lockdown Protesters
Protesters questioning the ongoing need for lockdown measures aimed at controlling Covid19 are marching to make their concerns known, in some cases with arms and other military paraphernalia. Some ethicists think these protectors should sign a pledge to forego scarce medical care in the name of their political ideas. We disagree.Read “Clinicians Have a Moral Duty to Care for All Patients–Including Lockdown Protesters”
Page
New Recommendations Address Crisis of Physician Stress
January 18, 2023 – 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....Read “New Recommendations Address Crisis of Physician Stress”
Page
Support Our Work
Bioethics Forum Essay
We Need International Medical Graduates to Help Fight Covid-19. Immigration Policies Keep Them Away
Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethical Responsibility in Publishing Research Results on Covid-19 Treatments
There is little doubt about the urgent need for Covid-19 treatment. But premature publication of definitive recommendations based on inappropriate conclusions grounded in scant, hastily-acquired data serve only at best to confuse and at worst mislead at a time when tensions are high and need for help is great.Read “Ethical Responsibility in Publishing Research Results on Covid-19 Treatments”
Bioethics Forum Essay
We Can’t Forget the Nation’s Other Epidemic
Covid isn’t merely overshadowing the drug overdose crisis—it’s directly worsening it.Hastings Center News
The Hastings Center Produces Guidance for Ethical Practice in Responding to COVID-19
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.Read “The Hastings Center Produces Guidance for Ethical Practice in Responding to COVID-19”
Bioethics Forum Essay
What Warrants Religious Exemption from Covid Vaccine Mandates?
Faced with mandatory Covid vaccination, students and employees have appealed to religion as grounds for exemption. This latest conscience war within our culture wars presents a minefield of legal and philosophical complexities for states and health care systems.Read “What Warrants Religious Exemption from Covid Vaccine Mandates?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Bioethicists and Health Care Institutions Must Act Against Florida’s Anti-Immigrant Law
Florida’s new anti-immigrant law, SB 1718, has escaped widespread notice, despite the way it will undermine the mission—and core identity--of not-for-profit hospitals as caring institutions that promote the health of the community. Bioethics and health care institutions must take action.Read “Bioethicists and Health Care Institutions Must Act Against Florida’s Anti-Immigrant Law”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Xenotransplantation: Three Areas of Concern
News of the first transplant of a pig’s heart into a human raises hope that the procedure could one day help alleviate the shortage of organs. But before we forge ahead with xenotransplantation trials, we should be concerned about several issues: the potential to spread pathogens, exploitation of human research participants, and animal welfare.Bioethics Forum Essay
Accepting the Challenge: Covid Vaccine Challenge Trials Can Be Ethically Justified
The Covid-19 pandemic is unlikely to end until there is a safe, effective, and widely distributed vaccine. How soon can researchers achieve this goal? The answer largely depends on which strategies researchers are willing to adopt. One potential strategy is to conduct human challenge studies, in which researchers give an experimental vaccine to healthy volunteers and then test—or “challenge”—the vaccine by purposely exposing volunteers to the virus. Although a growing number of voices are calling on researchers to employ this strategy, the proposal is generating a heated debate about the ethics of such research.Read “Accepting the Challenge: Covid Vaccine Challenge Trials Can Be Ethically Justified”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Nope. A Covid-19 Travel Pass isn’t Just like the Yellow Card.
Citing the Yellow Card as precedent for Covid-19 travel passes that exempt those with proof of vaccination from testing and quarantine mandates when crossing certain borders is an erroneous policy assumption that could prolong the pandemic and imperil global health.Read “Nope. A Covid-19 Travel Pass isn’t Just like the Yellow Card.”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Advancing Maternal Health Equity with Data Transparency: The Case of Texas
Texas has delayed the release of the full report of the most up-to-date data on maternal health, further threatening the health of marginalized women, children, and families.Read “Advancing Maternal Health Equity with Data Transparency: The Case of Texas”
From Bioethics Briefings
Environment, Ethics, and Human Health
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...From Bioethics Briefings
Public Health Ethics and Law
Framing the Issue The role of public health is to assure the conditions needed to promote and protect people’s health. These conditions include various economic, social, and environmental factors...From Bioethics Briefings
Organ Transplantation
Framing the Issue Every day about 17 people in the United States die waiting for organ transplants. The deaths are especially tragic since many might be prevented if more organs...Page
Ethics and Neonatal Care
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Neonatal Care Advances in the care of critically ill newborns over the last 40 years have resulted in the ability to save...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes 2024 Fellows
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...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Cofounder Willard Gaylin (1925-2022)
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.Page
PRESS RELEASE: 10.11.11 New Project Examines Medical Safety Net for Undocumented Patients
(Garrison, NY) The Hastings Center is exploring the ethical challenges that clinicians and organizations face when providing medical care to undocumented immigrants in the United States. The project is supported...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 10.11.11 New Project Examines Medical Safety Net for Undocumented Patients”
Page
Hastings Center Announces New Award for Exemplary End-of-Life Care for Vulnerable and Underserved
The award is named in honor of Dr. Richard Payne, an internationally acclaimed leader in palliative care. At the time of his death, Dr. Payne was a Trustee of the...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 10.04.11 Does MRI Pose More than Minimal Risk in Pediatric Research?
(Garrison, NY) Shedding light on a question that has baffled research ethics review boards, a new analysis of the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in pediatric clinical trials finds...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 10.04.11 Does MRI Pose More than Minimal Risk in Pediatric Research?”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 09.26.11 Is Gallows Humor in Medicine Wrong?
(Garrison, NY) Doctors and other medical professionals occasionally joke about their patients’ problems. Some of these jokes are clearly wrong, but some joking between medical professionals is not only ethical,...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 09.26.11 Is Gallows Humor in Medicine Wrong?”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 08.18.11 Wesleyan University President Michael Roth Joins Hastings Center Board
(Garrison, NY) Historian and author Michael S. Roth has been elected to the Board of Directors of The Hastings Center.Roth, who has served as president of Wesleyan University since 2007,...Hastings Center News
Climate Change Ethics Explained in New Primer
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...Page
IRB Submission Guidelines
Authors’ Instructions IRB: Ethics & Human Research is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes scholarly articles offering insight on issues of critical importance to research with human subjects, including findings and analysis...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 08.09.11 Study Finds Cognitive Deficits More than Psychotic Symptoms Impair Decision-making Capacity in Individuals with Schizophrenia
(Garrison, NY) Concern about the capacity of individuals with schizophrenia to consent to clinical research studies has largely focused on impairment due to psychotic symptoms associated with the disorder. Less...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 08.04.11 Hastings Center Report Expands Reach through Wiley-Blackwell Partnership
(Garrison, NY) The Hastings Center is pleased to announce a new partnership with Wiley-Blackwell, the Scientific, Technical, Medical, and Scholarly (STMS) publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., to publish the Hastings...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 10-09-19 New Project: Wrestling with Genetics and Behavior: Risks, Potential Benefits, and Ethical Responsibility
Page
PRESS RELEASE 1-29-2019: The Inaugural Issue of Ethics & Human Research, January – February 2019
Editor’s Note: Widening the Lens Karen J. Maschke The journal’s name change “provides an opportunity to identify new ethical, policy, and regulatory challenges that rapid developments in science, medicine, and...Page
IRB Reprint Permissions
All requests for permission to reprint or otherwise reproduce articles that have appeared in IRB: Ethics & Human Research are handled by the Copyright Clearance Center. Get permissions for IRB: Ethics & Human Research. Authors who...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 08.01.11 Social Challenges of Synthetic Biology Examined
(Garrison, NY) In the wake of last year’s creation of the first self-replicating cell with a synthetic genome – which was quickly followed by a request from President Barack Obama...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 08.01.11 Social Challenges of Synthetic Biology Examined”
Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 07.15.11 Hastings Center Scholar and Colleagues Examine Spiritual Care of Seriously Ill Children
(Garrison, NY) Spiritual care – the care of a patient as a whole person through support for how this person finds meaning in the experience of illness – is widely...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 07.11.11 Summertime, Vacations at National Parks, Corn, Baseball – They’re All Connected in a New Book About the Meaning of Nature
(Garrison, NY) “All natural,” the way Mother Nature intended it,” “it’s just human nature,” “that’s not natural.” The idea of nature and what we call natural does a lot of...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 06.09.11 Physician participation in lethal injection executions should not be banned, argue two ethicists
(Garrison, NY) Should physicians be banned from assisting in a lethal injection execution, or lose professional certification for doing so? A recent ruling by the American Board of Anesthesiology will...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 05.31.11 What Can We Do About Death? Reinventing the American Medical System
(Garrison, NY) In a feature article in The New Republic, Daniel Callahan and Sherwin Nuland propose a radical reinvention of the American medical system requiring new ways of thinking about living,...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 05.31.11 What Can We Do About Death? Reinventing the American Medical System”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 05.09.11 A Grim Dilemma: Treating the Tortured Prisoner
(Garrison, NY) Medical involvement with torture is prohibited by international law and professional associations, and yet sometimes it is the right thing for doctors to do, argue two bioethicists. Their...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 05.09.11 A Grim Dilemma: Treating the Tortured Prisoner”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 05.04.11 Gilbert Omenn, Leading Cancer Researcher, Geneticist, and Policy Expert, Joins Hastings Center Board
(Garrison, NY) Gilbert S. Omenn, MD, PhD, a leading cancer and translational science researcher and science policy expert, has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Hastings Center. Omenn...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 04.14.11 Too Much Information? Risk-benefit data does not always lead to informed decision-making
(Garrison, NY) Giving patients data about the risks and benefits of a medical intervention is not always helpful and may even lead them to irrational decisions, according to an article...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 03.24.11 Thomas H. Murray to Step Down as President of The Hastings Center
(Garrison, NY) Thomas H. Murray, president and CEO of The Hastings Center, announced that he will step down in 2012 from his leadership role at the bioethics research institution. Murray,...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 03.24.11 Thomas H. Murray to Step Down as President of The Hastings Center”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 03.16.11 Debates about Diagnosing and Treating Emotional and Behavioral Disturbances in Children Are Unnecessarily Polarized
(Garrison, NY) Decisions about whether and how to diagnose children with emotional and behavioral disturbances, and whether and how to treat them, are sometimes not clear-cut. When decisions lie within...Page
PRESS RELEASE 5-15-2019: National Endowment for the Humanities supports project on disability, technology, and flourishing
People with disabilities are experts at navigating a world that is not built for them – often by turning to technologies such as voice recognition devices and cochlear implants. But...Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 02.24.11 Erik Parens to Speak About Behavioral Genetics at Feb. 28 Meeting of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues
(Garrison, NY) Hastings Center Scholar Erik Parens, PhD, will speak about behavioral genetics to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues on Monday, February 28. The meeting kicks off...Page
PRESS RELEASE 3-25-2019: New in Ethics & Human Research, March-April 2019
Anticipatory Waivers of Consent for Pediatric Biobanking Jane A. Hartsock, Peter H. Schwartz, Amy C. Waltz, and Mary A. Ott Almost half of the approximately 900 biobanks operating in the...Read “PRESS RELEASE 3-25-2019: New in Ethics & Human Research, March-April 2019”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 01.24.11 Unrealistic Optimism Appears Common in Early Cancer Trials
(Garrison, NY) Can optimism be ethically problematic? Yes, according to a new study, which found unrealistic optimism prevalent among participants in early-phase cancer trials and suggested that it may compromise informed...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 01.24.11 Unrealistic Optimism Appears Common in Early Cancer Trials”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 01.13.11 Next-Generation Hospital Design Can Improve Health—and Save Money
(Garrison, NY) Extra large private hospital rooms with plenty of natural light and artwork may seem like unaffordable luxuries, but new research shows that these and other architecture and design...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 01.13.11 Next-Generation Hospital Design Can Improve Health—and Save Money”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 6-6-2019: Dementia and the Ethics of Choosing When to Die
Read “PRESS RELEASE 6-6-2019: Dementia and the Ethics of Choosing When to Die”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 01.11.11 Five Physicians Honored for Exemplary End-of-Life Care
(Garrison, NY) A pioneer in establishing palliative care as a medical specialty is one of the five American physicians being honored today for improving the care of patients near the...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 01.11.11 Five Physicians Honored for Exemplary End-of-Life Care”
Page
Logos and Photos
For more logos, contact Nora Porter, Art Director portern@thehastingscenter.org 845-424-4040, ext. 225Page
Hastings Bioethics Forum
Hastings Bioethics Forum publishes commentaries on topical issues in bioethics. Susan Gilbert, Editor. For questions about contributing, contact gilberts@thehastingscenter.org. Essays are the opinions of the authors, not of The Hastings Center.Page
Looking for the Psychosocial Impacts of Genomic Information
Monday, February 26 and Tuesday, February 27, 2018 For the last quarter century, researchers have been asking whether genomic information might have negative psychosocial effects. Anxiety, depression, disrupted relationships, and heightened...Read “Looking for the Psychosocial Impacts of Genomic Information”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 11.30.10 Recommendations Issued on Controversial “Ashley” Procedure for Disabled Children
(Garrison, NY) Should parents be able to use medical means to restrict the growth of profoundly disabled children to make them easier to care for at home? A working group...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 11.29.30 How We Die, Award-Winning Classic, Updated for 2010
(Garrison, NY) In a new edition of How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter, Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D., Hastings Center board member and Fellow, discusses the state of end-of-life care...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 11.29.30 How We Die, Award-Winning Classic, Updated for 2010”
Page
New in the Hastings Center Report 52, no. 2
New in the Hastings Center Report: Architecture as medical intervention, industry salespeople in the OR, unconsented intimate medical exams, and more in the latest issue. The Bioethics of Built Space:...Bioethics Forum Essay
Controversy in the Hastings Center Report: Responding to an Article on Obesity
Nearly everyone agrees that obesity is a significant public health problem in the United States, and nearly everyone agrees that the public health responses to it so far have been...Read “Controversy in the Hastings Center Report: Responding to an Article on Obesity”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 4-2-2018: Application Deadline Approaching: The Hastings Center Awards for Excellence in Journalism on Ethics and Reprogenetics
Submit an article to The Hastings Center Awards for Excellence in Journalism on Ethics and Reprogenetics. Three prizes will be given: a first prize of $6,000 and two runners-up of...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 11.11.10 Pharmaceutical Company Bioethics? Public Health Bioethics? Regenerative Medicine Bioethics?
(Garrison, NY) To celebrate 40 years of pioneering bioethics publication, the Hastings Center Report, the world’s first bioethics journal, looked to the future, asking young scholars to write about what the next...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 11.10.10 Researchers See Ethical Dilemmas in Providing Care in Drug Detention Centers
(Garrison, NY) Organizations that seek to provide health care, food, and other services to people held in drug detention centers in developing countries often face ethical dilemmas: Are they doing...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 10.12.10 Joseph J. Fins Elected to Institute of Medicine of the National Academies
Joseph J. Fins, M.D., chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and a Hastings Center board member, was elected to the Institute...Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 10.07.10 Author Who Revealed Unethical Guatemala Syphilis Study Writes Follow-up for Bioethics Forum
(Garrison, NY) The researcher whose revelations about unethical U.S. studies on syphilis in Guatemala in the 1940’s lead to apologies from the Obama administration last week has written a commentary...HASTINGS CENTER NEWS
Neuroscience & Society Series
Series Editor: Gregory E. Kaebnick Funder: Dana Foundation Start date: January 2023 The Hastings Center Report is publishing a series of 18 open-access articles and essays on the ethical, legal, and social...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 09.16.10 With Growing U.S. Support for Personalized Medicine, a Look at Ethical Dilemmas
(Garrison, NY) As government support for personalized medicine grows, a consumer advocate, a patient, and bioethicists explore ethical controversies. Direct-to-consumer genetic tests, privacy, targeted cancer therapies, and Henrietta Lacks are...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 09.14.10 Legal Analysis: The Health Insurance Mandate Is Constitutional
(Garrison, NY) The most politically charged feature of the health reform law is the mandate that legal residents have health insurance. Within weeks of the law’s passage, twenty states had...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 09.14.10 Legal Analysis: The Health Insurance Mandate Is Constitutional”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 4-25-2019: New in the Hastings Center Report, March-April 2019
Federal Right to Try: Where Is It Going? Kelly Folkers, Carolyn Chapman, and Barbara Redman Many patients with terminal or serious illness who have exhausted their treatment options want access...Read “PRESS RELEASE 4-25-2019: New in the Hastings Center Report, March-April 2019”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 09.09.10 Study Finds Most Oregon Hospices do not Fully Participate in the Death with Dignity Act
(Garrison, NY) A survey in the latest issue of the Hastings Center Report found that most hospices in Oregon, the first state to legalize physician-assistance in dying, either do not participate in...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 08.10.10 Clinical Trials Abroad: Making Non-English Language Consent Forms Readable
(Garrison, NY) The first study to look at simplified English-language consent forms translated into another language calls into question the common belief that a translated consent form meets readability standards....Page
PRESS RELEASE: 08.10.10 Clinical Trials: Study Suggests that Comprehension Is not Affected by Length or Complexity of Consent Forms or by Payment for Research Participation
(Garrison, NY) Although informed consent is an ethical cornerstone in research with humans, some studies suggests that volunteers often do not understand key aspects of the research in which they...Page
PRESS RELEASE 08-16-2018: New in The Hastings Center Report, July-August 2018
On Avoiding Deep Dementia Norman L. Cantor To avoid prolonged dementia, the author has written an advanced directive to prohibit the provision of life-sustaining interventions, including hydration and nutrition, should...Read “PRESS RELEASE 08-16-2018: New in The Hastings Center Report, July-August 2018”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 1-04-2019: What Does “Dead” Mean?
Should death be defined in strictly biological terms — as the body’s failure to maintain integrated functioning of respiration, blood circulation, and neurological activity? Should death be declared on the...Page
PRESS RELEASE 6-1-2018: New in the Hastings Center Report, May-June 2018
Genetic Privacy, Disease Prevention, and the Principle of Rescue Madison K. Kilbride People who undergo genetic testing sometimes discover that they carry mutations that increase their risk of hereditary disease....Read “PRESS RELEASE 6-1-2018: New in the Hastings Center Report, May-June 2018”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 07.15.10 Bioethics Beach Reading, Summer 2010 Edition
(Garrison, NY) What if I were grown only so my organs could be harvested, and I had to care for others whose organs are being taken, too, while I wait for...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 07.15.10 Bioethics Beach Reading, Summer 2010 Edition”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 1-04-2019: New in the Hastings Center Report
The Social Value Requirement in Research: From the Transactional to the Basic Structure Model of Stakeholder Obligations Danielle M. Wenner The Nuremberg Code and other research ethics guidelines stipulate that...Read “PRESS RELEASE 1-04-2019: New in the Hastings Center Report”
Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 07.01.10 Greg Kaebnick to Speak on Synthetic Biology at First Meeting of The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues
(Garrison, NY) Synthetic biology is the topic of the first meeting of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, which will be held on July 8-9 in Washington,...Page
Press Release HCR Nov-Dec 2020
New in the Hastings Center Report: Should Many Prescription Drugs Be Available Over the Counter? Appealing to patient autonomy, bioethicists argue for making oral contraceptives, HIV-prevention medicines, statins, and...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 06.22.10 Implementing Comparative Effectiveness Research: Lessons from the Mammography Screening Controversy
(Garrison, NY) The firestorm that followed the November 2009 release of guidelines that would have reduced use of screening mammograms in women aged 40 to 49 highlights challenges for implementing...Page
Press Release: Dr. Anthony Fauci on Public Trust in Science. A Hastings Center Event
The Hastings Center will host Dr. Anthony Fauci in “Public Trust in Science,” the second in a Hastings Conversations discussion series, Securing Health in a Troubled Time. The nation’s top...Read “Press Release: Dr. Anthony Fauci on Public Trust in Science. A Hastings Center Event”
Hastings Center News
What Can Frankenstein Teach Us About Living in the Genetics Age?
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...Read “What Can Frankenstein Teach Us About Living in the Genetics Age?”
Page
Press Release: New Project: Building an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health Care
Big Data in health care is growing, and it is coming from an increasing number of sources, including electronic health records, patient monitors and physical activity trackers, and smartphone applications....Read “Press Release: New Project: Building an Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health Care”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 06.10.10 New Book Compares Health Care in New York, Paris, and London
(Garrison, NY) Why do other countries spend less on health care and yet achieve near-universal coverage and often better outcomes than the United States? This question has come up repeatedly...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 06.10.10 New Book Compares Health Care in New York, Paris, and London”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 05.28.10 Consent Forms for Research: Have They Improved in 25 Years?
(Garrison, NY) The consent forms that people sign before participating in research are widely considered difficult to understand and sometimes inaccurate. The lack of clarity was implicated in a high-profile...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 05.28.10 Consent Forms for Research: Have They Improved in 25 Years?”
Page
Press Release: Navigating: On Disability, Technology, and Experiencing the World
Virtual public event on Tuesday, September 29, presented by The Hastings Center and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities The Hastings Center will present the second in a...Read “Press Release: Navigating: On Disability, Technology, and Experiencing the World”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 2-18-14: Hastings Center Announces Journalists Bootcamp on Covering End-of-Life Care
Debates about when life ends and treatment decision-making are regularly in the news – most recently with the California teenager and the pregnant woman in Texas declared brain dead. To...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 05.19.10 Proposed Diagnostic Change Not Enough to Help Children Currently Diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder
(Garrison, NY) Shifting children from the controversial diagnosis of bipolar disorder to one that more accurately reflects their symptoms will not by itself decrease the rate of psychopharmacologic treatment and...Hastings Center News
Apply Now: 2025 Summer Bioethics Program for Undergraduates
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...Read “Apply Now: 2025 Summer Bioethics Program for Undergraduates”
Page
For The Media
Please direct media queries to:Susan Gilbert, communications directorgilberts@thehastingscenter.org845-424-4040, ext. 244 Hastings Center News:Read the News Archive About the Hastings Center:The Hastings Center is a nonpartisan ethics research institution founded in...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 04.14.10 Three Hastings Center Fellows Chosen for Obama’s Bioethics Commission; Chair Is Also a Fellow
(Garrison, NY) Hastings Center Fellows Anita Allen, Christine Grady, and Daniel Sulmasy were appointed to President Barack Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, the White House announced. Amy...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 04.01.10 Baseball season opener: athletes and ethicists look at fairness in sport
(Garrison,NY) Just in time for baseball’s opening day, a series of articles in the Hastings Center Report asks what constitutes fairness in elite sports and what it takes to stop cheating. New...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 03.24.10 Fertility industry offers big money to recruit “desirable” egg donors at top universities
(Garrison, NY) Many egg donation agencies and private couples routinely exceed compensation recommendation limits for potential donors, a new study finds. From a sample of over 300 college newspapers, findings...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 03.18.10 Broad Application of Bipolar Diagnosis in Children May Do More Harm than Good
(Garrison, NY) Troubled children diagnosed with bipolar disorder may fare better with a different diagnosis, according to researchers at The Hastings Center. The researchers support an emerging approach, which gives...Page
Inaugural Cohort of Trustees Emeriti Announced
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...Page
PRESS RELEASE 12-9-13 Marketing Loans for Fertility Treatments Raises Ethical Concerns
An increase in the number of lenders specializing in loans for fertility treatments enables more people to afford the treatments, but it also raises ethical concerns, concludes a commentary in the Hastings...Read “PRESS RELEASE 12-9-13 Marketing Loans for Fertility Treatments Raises Ethical Concerns”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Chinese Bioethicists: Silencing Doctor Impeded Early Control of Coronavirus
The death of Dr Li Wenliang from COVID-19 is heartbreaking for our country and people. Dr. Li was reprimanded for messages he posted in a chat group warning fellow doctors about a mysterious infection. His death from coronavirus underscored gaps and deficiencies in our country’s health care system and system of governance.Read “Chinese Bioethicists: Silencing Doctor Impeded Early Control of Coronavirus”
Page
Professional Chaplains and Health Care Quality Improvement
Project launched in March 2007 Download Can We Measure Good Chaplaincy?, an essay set featured in Hastings Center Report (Nov-Dec 2008). Download Professional Chaplains and Health Care Quality Improvement, Summary of Activities...Read “Professional Chaplains and Health Care Quality Improvement”
Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 03.08.10 Reporter Resources on the Obama Health Care Plan and Costs
(Garrison,NY) President Obama released a proposal for health reform last week that, according to the White House Web site, aims to “make health care more affordable, make health insurers more accountable,...Read “MEDIA ADVISORY: 03.08.10 Reporter Resources on the Obama Health Care Plan and Costs”
Page
Event to Examine Disability as a Creative Force
SEPTEMBER 22, 2021: The Hastings Center, a global ethics leader, announce that three artists and writers will lead a special virtual event — “Enjoying: Disability as a Creative Force” —...Bioethics Forum Essay
Bioethics Books in Brief
A lot of new bioethics books come to The Hastings Center. Some of them end up getting reviewed in the Hastings Center Report, but not as many as we’d like. So,...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 10-7-13 Improving the Quality of Clinical Ethics Consultants
Clinical ethicists play a vital role in hospitals and other health care systems by helping to resolve ethical conflicts that arise between patients, families, and clinicians about end-of-life care and...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 10-7-13 Improving the Quality of Clinical Ethics Consultants”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Coronavirus Response Is Insufficient for Vulnerable New Yorkers
Read “Coronavirus Response Is Insufficient for Vulnerable New Yorkers”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 4-5-2018: New in the Hastings Center Report: March-April 2018
Progress: Its Glories and Pitfalls Daniel Callahan In his new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Stephen Pinker, a cognitive psychologist and linguist at Harvard,...Read “PRESS RELEASE 4-5-2018: New in the Hastings Center Report: March-April 2018”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 07-08-2019 Does Genetic Testing Pose Psychosocial Risks?
Read “PRESS RELEASE: 07-08-2019 Does Genetic Testing Pose Psychosocial Risks?”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 9/4/13 Childhood obesity demands more doctor-parent discussion
Surveys show that few pediatricians and other doctors who treat overweight children discuss weight with their parents. But in avoiding the topic, doctors are missing an opportunity to help control...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 9/4/13 Childhood obesity demands more doctor-parent discussion”
Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 5-16-13 Ethical Dilemmas Raised by New Stem Cell Research
The report yesterday that scientists in Oregon had created the first human embryonic stem cells through cloning renewed hopes for the development of stem cell therapies for degenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer’s...Read “MEDIA ADVISORY: 5-16-13 Ethical Dilemmas Raised by New Stem Cell Research”
Page
Neuroscience and Society
Neuroscience and Society is a three-year series of articles and essays on the ethical, legal, and social issues presented by emerging neuroscience. It is published open access in the Hastings...Page
PRESS RELEASE 5-11-2017: Setting Priorities for Future Work on Aging
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...Read “PRESS RELEASE 5-11-2017: Setting Priorities for Future Work on Aging”
Page
Hastings Center Partners on AI Project Led by National Academies
June 21, 2023 – The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) is partnering with a group of leading health, bioethics, equity, tech, patient advocacy, and research organizations, including The Hastings Center, to develop...Read “Hastings Center Partners on AI Project Led by National Academies”
Page
Summer Bioethics Program for Undergraduates
About the Program The Hastings Center Summer Bioethics Program for Undergraduates is a five-day live online program opportunity for undergraduates who are interested in bioethics issues and related careers who...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...Page
New in Ethics & Human Research, November-December 2021 Issue: Pregnant Participants in Research
Institutional review boards can be inconsistent and can lack transparency in decision-making. In this issue of Ethics & Human Research, Andrea Seykora, Director of Public Policy and Legal Affairs at...Page
PRESS RELEASE 10-2-2017: Breakthrough Cancer Treatment Brings Hope and Challenges
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...Read “PRESS RELEASE 10-2-2017: Breakthrough Cancer Treatment Brings Hope and Challenges”
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...Page
New in Ethics & Human Research, September-October 2021 Issue: Pregnant Participants in Research
Pregnant people are often excluded from research without clear justification, even when there is little harm to the fetus in minimal‐risk research. In this issue of Ethics & Human Research,...Page
PRESS RELEASE 10-16-2018: What Makes a Good Life in Late Life? Citizenship and Justice in Aging Societies
The United States is an aging society, where one in five people will be 65 or older by 2035. While bioethics scholarship on aging has historically concerned itself with issues...Page
PRESS RELEASE 2-21-2019: New in the Hastings Center Report, January-February 2019
Social Media, E-Health, and Medical Ethics Mélanie Terrasse, Moti Gorin, and Dominic Sisti Given the profound influence of social media and emerging evidence of its effects on human behavior and...Read “PRESS RELEASE 2-21-2019: New in the Hastings Center Report, January-February 2019”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 10-3-2017: New in the Hastings Center Report
The Case for Resource Sensitivity: Why It Is Ethical to Provide Cheaper, Less Effective Treatments in Global Health Govind C. Persad and Ezekiel J. Emanuel When Dr. Hortense screens her...Read “PRESS RELEASE 10-3-2017: New in the Hastings Center Report”
Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 4/2/13 Hastings Center Fellow to Deliver George W. Gay Lecture at Harvard
Dan Brock, the Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Medical Ethics in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, will deliver the 2013 George W. Gay...Read “MEDIA ADVISORY: 4/2/13 Hastings Center Fellow to Deliver George W. Gay Lecture at Harvard”
Page
Supporting women’s autonomy in prenatal testing
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...Page
PRESS RELEASE 10-22-2018: New in The Hastings Center Report, September-October 2018
Disentangling Conscience Protections Nadia N. Sawicki Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced its intention to strengthen the enforcement of legal protections for health care...Read “PRESS RELEASE 10-22-2018: New in The Hastings Center Report, September-October 2018”
Page
Recreating the wild: De-extinction, technology, and the ethics of conservation
Is extinction forever? Efforts are under way to use gene editing and other tools of biotechnology to “recreate” extinct species such as the woolly mammoth and the passenger pigeon. Could...Read “Recreating the wild: De-extinction, technology, and the ethics of conservation”
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...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 1-23-13 Experts Propose Overhaul of Ethics Oversight of Research
(Garrison, NY) The longstanding ethical framework for protecting human volunteers in medical research needs to be replaced because it is outdated and can impede efforts to improve health care quality,...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 1-23-13 Experts Propose Overhaul of Ethics Oversight of Research”
Page
Physicians and Nurses Recognized for Providing Exceptional End of Life Care
Six physicians and three nurses selected to receive the 2022 Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Awards. The Hastings Center and The Cunniff-Dixon Foundation are pleased to announce nine recipients of awards that...Read “Physicians and Nurses Recognized for Providing Exceptional End of Life Care ”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 1-22-13 Bioethics Leader Calls for Bold Approach to Fighting Obesity
(Garrison, NY) Arguing that obesity “may be the most difficult and elusive public health problem the United States has ever encountered” and that anti-obesity efforts having made little discernible difference,...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 1-22-13 Bioethics Leader Calls for Bold Approach to Fighting Obesity”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 1-15-13 Five Physicians Honored for Outstanding Care of Patients Near the End of Life
(Garrison NY, January 15, 2013) Five physicians who have distinguished themselves in caring for patients near the end of life have been named recipients of the 2013 Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 11.13.12 Western Media Coverage of Female Genital Surgeries in Africa is “Hyperbolic” and “One-Sided,” says International Policy Group
(Garrison, NY) Despite widespread condemnation of female genital surgeries as a form of mutilation and a violation of human rights, an international advisory group argues that the practice is poorly...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 07-11-2019 Hastings Center Report, May-June 2019
Read “PRESS RELEASE: 07-11-2019 Hastings Center Report, May-June 2019”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 08-27-2019 Hastings Center Report, July-August 2019
Read “PRESS RELEASE: 08-27-2019 Hastings Center Report, July-August 2019”
Page
Ethics of Medical Research with Animals: Science, Values, and Alternatives
Project launched in June 2011 Principal Investigators: Thomas H. Murray, Gregory Kaebnick, and Susan Gilbert Funder:The Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund Project background Research involving animals has been a cornerstone of medical progress...Read “Ethics of Medical Research with Animals: Science, Values, and Alternatives”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 11.19.12 Two New Books by Daniel Callahan: A Memoir and a Collected Writing on “Roots of Bioethics”
(Garrison, NY) Daniel Callahan, who established the field of bioethics with the co-founding of The Hastings Center in 1969, has two new books: a memoir, In Search of the Good:...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 09-03-2019 Human Flourishing in an Age of Gene Editing
Read “PRESS RELEASE: 09-03-2019 Human Flourishing in an Age of Gene Editing”
Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 11.02.12 Daniel Callahan and Marcia Angell on Death with Dignity Ballot Initiative
(Garrison, NY) New commentaries by Daniel Callahan, cofounder of The Hastings Center, and Marcia Angell, M.D., senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School, give opposing views on the...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 10-01-2019 Ethics & Human Research, September-October 2019
Read “PRESS RELEASE: 10-01-2019 Ethics & Human Research, September-October 2019”
Page
Stays at The Hastings Center
The Hastings Center offers short-term, self-supervised stays to scholars with well-developed writing or editing projects in bioethics or medical/health humanities underway. Admission to this program is by application, starting with...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 10.15.12 Personalized Genomic Medicine – How Much Can It Really Empower Patients?
(Garrison, NY) Personalized genomic medicine is hailed as a revolution that will empower patients to take control of their own health care, but it could end up taking control away...Page
PRESS RELEASE 3-04-2019: Should Patients Be Considered Consumers?
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...Read “PRESS RELEASE 3-04-2019: Should Patients Be Considered Consumers?”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 09.11.12 Analyzing the “Facebook Effect” on Organ and Tissue Donation
(Garrison, NY) When Facebook introduced a feature that enables people to register to become organ and tissue donors, thousands did so, dwarfing any previous donation initiative, write Blair L. Sadler...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 09.11.12 Analyzing the “Facebook Effect” on Organ and Tissue Donation”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 6-6-2018: New Hastings Center Project: How Should the Public Learn?
Technologies are transforming the planet and all its inhabitants, human and nonhuman, calling out for assessment and wise decision making. Yet trust in science is eroding and polarization deeply threatens...Read “PRESS RELEASE 6-6-2018: New Hastings Center Project: How Should the Public Learn?”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 11-27-2017: Reimagining Autonomy in Reproductive Medicine
Do the reproductive choices of prospective parents truly align with their values and priorities? How do doctors, reproductive technologies, and the law influence those choices? And why should certain women...Read “PRESS RELEASE 11-27-2017: Reimagining Autonomy in Reproductive Medicine”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 8-15-2018: Should All Babies Have Their Genomes Sequenced?
As the cost of genome sequencing decreases, researchers and clinicians are debating whether all newborns should be sequenced at birth, facilitating a lifetime of personalized medical care. But while sequencing...Read “PRESS RELEASE 8-15-2018: Should All Babies Have Their Genomes Sequenced?”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 9-26-2018: Debating Modern Medical Technologies: The Politics of Safety, Effectiveness, and Patient Access
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...Page
Project to Examine “Deliberate Extinction” of Species
October 4, 2023 – 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...Read “Project to Examine “Deliberate Extinction” of Species”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 08.10.12 Prenatal Whole Genome Sequencing: Just Because We Can, Should We?
(Garrison, NY) With whole genome sequencing quickly becoming more affordable and accessible, we need to pay more attention to the massive amount of information it will deliver to parents –...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 08.10.12 Prenatal Whole Genome Sequencing: Just Because We Can, Should We?”
Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 07.26.12 Bioethicist Tom Murray available to discuss doping, fairness, and other ethical issues in sport as Olympics approach
(Garrison, NY) With the Olympics beginning on July 27, attention is focused on the world’s top athletes, as well as ethical issues surrounding the use of performance-enhancing drugs and other...Page
PRESS RELEASE 1-10-2018: GOOD SPORT: WHY OUR GAMES MATTER AND HOW DOPING UNDERMINES THEM
New book by Hastings Center President Emeritus Thomas Murray examines the use of sports enhancements against the values that give athletic competition its meaning. In the wake of Olympic doping...Read “PRESS RELEASE 1-10-2018: GOOD SPORT: WHY OUR GAMES MATTER AND HOW DOPING UNDERMINES THEM”
Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 07.24.12 Hastings Center Board member and Fellow on White House panel: Greening America’s Hospitals
(Garrison, NY) Successful strategies that hospitals and other health care facilities can use to increase environmental sustainability, reduce costs, and improve patient care are the focus of an event taking...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 07.12.12 Medical Ethicists Face Cancer in New Book
(Garrison, NY) “Since my diagnosis, I had been immersed in a crash course in real-world medical ethics,” writes Rebecca Dresser, editor of Malignant: Medical Ethicists Confront Cancer, published by Oxford...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 07.12.12 Medical Ethicists Face Cancer in New Book”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 06.28.12 “Recruitment by Genotype” for Genetic Research Poses Ethical Challenges, Study Finds
(Garrison, NY) A potentially powerful strategy for studying the significance of human genetic variants is to recruit people identified by previous genetic research as having particular variants. But that strategy...Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 06.22.12 Is the Mandate Fair? The Bioethics of the Affordable Care Act
(Garrison, NY) However the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the insurance mandate and other aspects of the Affordable Care Act, the law raises foundational issues for society about...Read “MEDIA ADVISORY: 06.22.12 Is the Mandate Fair? The Bioethics of the Affordable Care Act”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 11-30-2017: NEW IN THE HASTINGS CENTER REPORT
Standard-of-care sprawl and clinician self-interest, health implications of ending DACA, questions about CAR-T gene therapy, and more in the November-December 2017 issue. Stemming the Standard-of-Care Sprawl: Clinician Self-Interest and the...Read “PRESS RELEASE 11-30-2017: NEW IN THE HASTINGS CENTER REPORT”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 12-10-2019 Hastings Center Report, November-December 2019
Read “PRESS RELEASE: 12-10-2019 Hastings Center Report, November-December 2019”
Page
Graduate Programs
There are a number of graduate programs to help students and professionals understand the moral problems that arise in medicine and the life sciences. This searchable database from the Association...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 05.30.12 When is it Ethical to Prescribe Placebos?
(Garrison, NY) The American Medical Association’s Code of Ethics prohibits physicians from prescribing treatments that they consider to be placebos unless the patients know this and agree to take them...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 05.30.12 When is it Ethical to Prescribe Placebos?”
Page
Report Calls for Improved Oversight On “Chimeric” Human – Animal Research
December 12, 2022 – A new report on the ethics of crossing species boundaries by inserting human cells into (nonhuman) animals – research surrounded by debate – makes recommendations clarifying...Read “Report Calls for Improved Oversight On “Chimeric” Human – Animal Research”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 10-11-2019 Hastings Center Report, September-October 2019
Read “PRESS RELEASE: 10-11-2019 Hastings Center Report, September-October 2019”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 05.01.12 Protections Needed for Some People Who Say No to Research, Study Concludes
(Garrison, NY) Although federal regulations provide protections for people who participate in research, protections are also needed for some people who decline to participate and may face harmful repercussions as...Hastings Center News
What’s Actually Wrong with Sports Doping?
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...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 03.27.12 Bioethics Gets Personal with Hastings’ First Consumer Website and Hastings-NOVA Special on Personalized Medicine Premiering on PBS on March 28
(Garrison, NY) Will genetic testing and personalized medicine change the way you think about your life? Should it? What can you really learn about your future from direct-to-consumer genetic tests–or...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 03.22.12 Hastings Bioethicist Contributes to Consensus Guidelines on Responsibility of Biobanks to Return Results to Participants in Genomic Research
(Garrison, NY) Karen J. Maschke, a research scholar at The Hastings Center, is coauthor of a consensus article that explicitly outlines “significant new responsibilities” for biobanks concerning the return of...Page
PRESS RELEASE 5-23-2019: New in Ethics & Human Research, May-June 2019
Burden or Opportunity? Parent Experiences When Approached for Research in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Erin Paquette, Avani Shukla, Jacob Davidson, Karen Rychlik, and Matthew Davis There’s an ongoing...Read “PRESS RELEASE 5-23-2019: New in Ethics & Human Research, May-June 2019”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Trial of “Death by Medicine”: An Interview with Lisa Krieger
On February 5, Lisa Krieger, a science and medicine writer for the Mercury News in San Jose, Ca, published a remarkably moving and insightful article about the protracted dying of her 88-year-old father. Suffering...Read “The Trial of “Death by Medicine”: An Interview with Lisa Krieger”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 02.22.12 Attitudes Vary about Payments to Research Participants
(Garrison, NY) Researchers almost always offer money as an incentive for healthy volunteers to enroll in research studies, but does payment amount to coercion or undue inducement to participate in...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 02.22.12 Attitudes Vary about Payments to Research Participants”
Page
Ethics of Medical Research with Animals: Science, Values, and Alternatives
Principal Investigators: Thomas H. Murray, Gregory Kaebnick, and Susan Gilbert Funder: The Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund The goal of the project was to bring together people with different points of view and...Read “Ethics of Medical Research with Animals: Science, Values, and Alternatives”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 02.07.12 Justifying Insurance Coverage for Orphan Drugs
(Garrison, NY) How can insurers justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient per year on “orphan drugs” – extremely expensive medications for rare conditions that are mostly chronic and life-threatening...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 02.07.12 Justifying Insurance Coverage for Orphan Drugs”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 01.10.12 Five Physicians Honored for End-of-Life Care
(Garrison, NY) A pioneer in establishing best practices for palliative care is one of the five American physicians being honored today for improving the care of patients near the end...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 01.10.12 Five Physicians Honored for End-of-Life Care”
Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Open House: June 13
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...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 12.07.11 Hasting Center Awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Grant
(Garrison, NY) The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded The Hastings Center a challenge grant to support an endowment for a major new humanities research program.The $425,000 grant, to...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 12.07.11 Hasting Center Awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Grant”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 12.06.11 Hastings Center, Kent Place School Embark on Pioneering High School Bioethics Program
(Garrison, NY ) The Hastings Center and the Ethics Institute at Kent Place School are joining forces on a pilot project in which a group of high school students will...Page
PRESS RELEASE: 11.22.11 Study of Women with Anorexia Nervosa Finds Inner Conflicts Over the “Real” Self that Have Treatment Implications
(Garrison, NY) People with anorexia nervosa struggle with questions about their real, or “authentic,” self – whether their illness is separate from or integral to them – and this conflict...Page
Hastings Center and Cunniff Dixon Foundation Announce Nursing Awards
The Hastings Center and the Cunniff-Dixon Foundation are pleased to announce two new $25,000 awards to honor outstanding care provided by hospice and palliative care nurses to patients nearing the...Read “Hastings Center and Cunniff Dixon Foundation Announce Nursing Awards”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 11.10.11 Hastings Center Elects 10 New Fellows, Expands International Reach
(Garrison, NY) The Hastings Center, the world’s first research center devoted to bioethics, has strengthened its international network of Fellows by electing ten new members from four different countries. The...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 11.10.11 Hastings Center Elects 10 New Fellows, Expands International Reach”
Page
PRESS RELEASE 2-20-2018: Special Report: Governance of Emerging Technologies: Aligning Policy Analysis with the Public’s Values
Emerging biotechnologies hold great promise but could pose great risks. However, the benefits and costs are often difficult to anticipate and hard to quantify, and they can vary widely among...From Bioethics Briefings
Enhancing Humans
Framing the Issue When Guttenberg invented the printing press, making the written word accessible to the masses, he could have hardly envisioned today’s world where the entirety of human knowledge...From Bioethics Briefings
End-of-Life Care
Framing the Issue End-of-life care and its many dilemmas capture public attention when they make national news, often involving a family seeking a court order to remove life support from...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Welcomes 14 New Fellows
The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 14 new Fellows.IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Certificates of Confidentiality and Informed Consent: Perspectives of IRB Chairs and Institutional Legal Counsel
Researchers conducting studies in which sensitive information about the participants is collected may apply to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a Certificate of Confidentiality to help safeguard participants’...Page
Ethics and Stem Cells
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Stem CellsStem cells hold great promise for treating degenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and diabetes, understanding genetic illnesses, and answering fundamental...Page
PRESS RELEASE: Undocumented Immigrants and Access to Health Care in New York City
The Hastings Center and the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) today released a report,“Undocumented Immigrants and Access to Health Care in New York City: Identifying Fair, Effective, and Sustainable Local...Read “PRESS RELEASE: Undocumented Immigrants and Access to Health Care in New York City”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Newspaper Op-Eds Should Disclose Authors’ Industry Ties
Earlier this month, The Seattle Times published an op-ed by Samuel Browd, medical director of Seattle Children’s Sport Concussion Program, on the risks of brain injury in youth sports. Dr. Browd...Read “Newspaper Op-Eds Should Disclose Authors’ Industry Ties”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Pediatric Magnetic Resonance Research and the Minimal-Risk Standard
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) research combines powerful electromagnetic forces and sophisticated electronic technology to provide privileged glimpses into the human body. These features make the field a proving ground for...Read “Pediatric Magnetic Resonance Research and the Minimal-Risk Standard”
Hastings Center News
Nominate Physicians for Outstanding End-of-Life Care
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...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Barriers to Change in the Informed Consent Process: A Systematic Literature Review
The informed consent process for clinical research is one that includes personal interactions, the informed consent document, and an individual’s decision about whether to participate in research. The intent is...Read “Barriers to Change in the Informed Consent Process: A Systematic Literature Review”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Ethical Review of Interpretive Research: Problems and Solutions
Since prior review and approval of human subject research became standard some thirty years ago, social scientists have voiced concern about the ways in which the rules and regulations that...Read “Ethical Review of Interpretive Research: Problems and Solutions”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Research Benefits for Hypothetical HIV Vaccine Trials: The Views of Ugandans in the Rakai District
Collaborative, multinational clinical research is complicated by thorny ethical issues, especially when sponsored by developed world entities and conducted in the developing world. An overarching ethical concern in all research...Bioethics Forum Essay
Public Citizen: The SUPPORT Study was Even Worse than We Thought
In his April 18 Bioethics Forum article, John Lantos criticized the findings of the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Human Research Protections that the conduct of the Surfactant,...Read “Public Citizen: The SUPPORT Study was Even Worse than We Thought”
In the Media
Children and the Pandemic: Hastings Scholars Make Three Policy Recommendations
While school districts around the country are planning whether and how to hold in-person classes in September, “society’s commitment to children has gone largely unmentioned,” write Hastings Center research scholars Carolyn P. Neuhaus and Josephine Johnston in The Hill.Read “Children and the Pandemic: Hastings Scholars Make Three Policy Recommendations”
From Bioethics Briefings
Torture: The Bioethics Perspective
Framing the Issue Torture occupies an odd position in that it is universally illegal and widely practiced. Despite many studies showing its inefficacy, more than half of the world’s nations...From Bioethics Briefings
Sports Enhancement
Framing the Issue Spring in America brings flowers, sweet warm breezes, and the thwack of a bat striking a baseball. The Mitchell Report, an early Christmas present to baseball fans...Our Team
Mildred Z. Solomon
Mildred Solomon has an international reputation for her research on, and advocacy for, wiser health care and science policy. She was President of The Hastings Center from 2012 to June...From Bioethics Briefings
Aging
Framing the Issue The aging of modern societies–a striking fruit of medical advances and improved economic and living standards–is one of the most important global challenges, affecting rich and poor...From Bioethics Briefings
Genomics, Behavior, and Social Outcomes
Framing the Issue The completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 ushered in technological advancements that have made genetic information more accessible to researchers and the public than ever...Bioethics Forum Essay
Living through the Pandemic in New Zealand
In New Zealand we have been saved from the worst devastations of Covid-19 by a firm government, courage and care for one another, and our geographic “moat.” With the recent minor surge of cases, our government has, once again, encouraged us to respond as a team of 5 million. We have been guided by the slogan “Be kind.”Bioethics Forum Essay
Responding to Ebola: Organizational Ethics, Frontline Perspectives
Beyond crucial questions of fair access to scarce supplies of the experimental drug ZMapp and to other potentially effective drugs to treat Ebola, commentators from bioethics, public health, journalism, and...Read “Responding to Ebola: Organizational Ethics, Frontline Perspectives”
Page
What Is Bioethics?
Bioethics is the interdisciplinary study of ethical issues arising in the life sciences, health care, technology, and health and science policy. It examines the ethical, legal, and social implications of such...Bioethics Forum Essay
Responding to Ebola: Selected Commentaries on Key Ethical Questions
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the largest and deadliest on record, and the crisis is evolving rapidly. More than 2,200 people have been infected in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and...Read “Responding to Ebola: Selected Commentaries on Key Ethical Questions”
Our Team
Erik Parens
Erik Parens is a senior research scholar at The Hastings Center and Director of the Center’s Initiative in Bioethics and the Humanities. He has taught bioethics as an adjunct professor...From Bioethics Briefings
Neonatal Care
Framing the Issue Approximately 380,000 babies, or 9.6%, are born prematurely (before 37 weeks gestation) in the United States each year. This is a significant reduction since 2007, when the...Page
Transcript: New Ethical Questions and 21st Century Genomics
Read “Transcript: New Ethical Questions and 21st Century Genomics”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Health Equity Without Ethics Perpetuates Marginalization
To eliminate a quality metric for clinical ethics is at odds with good clinical practice and it reinforces structural inequality.Read “Health Equity Without Ethics Perpetuates Marginalization”
COVID-19
Could the Common Cold Help Stop Covid-19? We Need to Know–Now.
In an essay published in Scientific American, we call for immediate and intensive research into the possibility that exposure to one of the coronaviruses that cause the common cold could decrease the severity of Covid-19, and could be leveraged to expand what’s been called “pre-existing” immunity to the disease by deliberate transmission of common cold coronaviruses. Here, we expand on our proposal.Read “Could the Common Cold Help Stop Covid-19? We Need to Know–Now.”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Say Their Names: Unclaimed Bodies and Untrustworthiness in Medical Science
A recent NBC investigative series titled “Dealing the Dead" revealed that thousands of unclaimed bodies were used by the University of North Texas Health Science Center for scientific research and medical education, and to generate profit. These findings raise important ethical questions around the need for ongoing transparency and accountability concerning the use of the deceased in medical research and education.Read “Say Their Names: Unclaimed Bodies and Untrustworthiness in Medical Science”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Ethics of Treating the President
Concerns about the health status of sitting presidents of the United States can raise significant questions in medical ethics, notably regarding the scope of a president’s right to confidentiality and of the public’s need—or right—to know about the president’s health, the role and responsibilities of the president’s physician, and the appropriateness of offering unapproved treatments. These concerns are heightened during the global pandemic for which there is no cure or vaccine and limited information about treatments.Bioethics Forum Essay
Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Rural Communities? Checking Our Assumptions
As access to vaccines increases, the popular press reports waning demand for vaccines in rural residents and points to vaccine hesitancy. But there may be other reasons why doses distributed to rural areas remain unclaimed.Read “Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Rural Communities? Checking Our Assumptions”
Hastings Center News
12 Outstanding Scholars Recognized for Work in Ethics of Disability, Transplantation, Mental Health Care, and Other Areas
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Race, Research, and Bioethics: The Chapatis Studies
New inquiry examines ethics of 1960's experiments involving Punjabi immigrants in the United Kingdom and radioactive chapatis.Bioethics Forum Essay
Keep Politics Out of State Medical Policy
State medical boards and other government-appointed health officials have an obligation to follow evidence-based medicine to frame their opinions and regulations. However, there is disturbing evidence that, in some cases, political ideology is guiding health policy.Page
Ethics of Nature, Human Nature, and Biotechnology
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Nature, Human Nature, and Biotechnology Moral views about nature—claims that nature or a natural state of affairs has value—are important in contemporary...Page
2023-2024 Sadler Scholars
Brooklyn Adams (she), PhD candidate in Epidemiology, UT-Houston Health Science Center, SPH About me: I am a first-generation college student who has long been passionate about health equity—and health inequity—in...Bioethics Forum Essay
Involuntary Withdrawal: A Bridge Too Far?
Despite its intended use as a treatment of last resort, some patients can remain on ECMO for weeks or months. And some are awake, alert, and capable of medical decision-making. RD was one such patient.Bioethics Forum Essay
Continuous Health Monitoring: Greater Self-Knowledge or TMI?
For millions of health-conscious Americans, digital technology has been a boon, providing increasingly sophisticated fitness trackers. Researchers speak excitedly about a new frontier of “continuous health monitoring,” with the potential to detect diseases and aliments in their incipient stages. It also raises a host of disturbing questions about health surveillance. Will these devices really empower us? Will they compromise us as autonomous individuals?Read “Continuous Health Monitoring: Greater Self-Knowledge or TMI?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Balancing a Patient’s Autonomy Against Misinformation
With ventilator support, Ms. J would have a 50% chance of making a full recovery. Without it she would almost certainly die. That notwithstanding, Ms. J declined to consent to the ventilator.Read “Balancing a Patient’s Autonomy Against Misinformation”
Hastings Center News
The Hastings Center Announces Three Promotions
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Should Ethicists Be at the Table in Public Health Policy Deliberations?
In a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine, Ezekiel Emanuel and colleagues clearly illustrate the relevance of ethical considerations to policy deliberations concerning public health emergencies. But do ethicists belong at the table?Read “Should Ethicists Be at the Table in Public Health Policy Deliberations?”
Hastings Center News
Rebuilding Trust in Health Care and Science
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Did Russia’s Most Influential Bioethicist Get a Coronavirus Vaccine?
Along with the announcement that his government had approved Sputnik V, the supposed Russian coronavirus vaccine, Vladimir Putin also indulged in a moment of paternal pride: Wanting to confirm his personal confidence in the vaccine, he mentioned that one of his daughters was among the early recipients. This raises a couple of intriguing questions: Which daughter was it? And why does it matter?Read “Did Russia’s Most Influential Bioethicist Get a Coronavirus Vaccine?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Working Around the System: Vaccine Navigators and Vaccine Equity
Vaccine navigators have emerged as a response to the complexity of mass vaccination for Covid-19.Read “Working Around the System: Vaccine Navigators and Vaccine Equity”
Page
Public Trust in Science
HASTINGS CONVERSATIONS: A SERIES Dr. Anthony Fauci explored the ethical issues raised by the erosion of trust in science in a new virtual discussion hosted by The Hastings Center. The...From Our Journals
Equitably Sharing the Benefits and Burdens of Research: Covid‐19 Raises the Stakes
Read “Equitably Sharing the Benefits and Burdens of Research: Covid‐19 Raises the Stakes”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethicists as a Force for Institutional Change and Policies to Promote Equality
In his recent JAMA article, Donald Berwick eloquently describes what he termed the “moral determinants of health,” by which he meant a strong sense of social solidarity in which people in the United States would “depend on each other for securing the basic circumstances of healthy lives,” reflecting a “moral law within.” Berwick’s work should serve as a call to action for bioethicists and clinical ethicists to consider what they can do to be forces of broad moral change in their institutions.Read “Ethicists as a Force for Institutional Change and Policies to Promote Equality”
From Our Journals
Pregnant Women in Trials of Covid-19: A Critical Time to Consider Ethical Frameworks of Inclusion in Clinical Trials
From Our Journals
Advantages of Using Lotteries to Select Participants for High-Demand Covid-19 Treatment Trials
From Our Journals
Why Challenge Trials of SARS‐CoV‐2 Vaccines Could Be Ethical Despite Risk of Severe Adverse Events
Page
Special Reports
Special Reports to the Hastings Center Report are one venue in which the Center publishes the results of its research projects. Reports may be single-authored or collections of essays prepared...Bioethics Forum Essay
The Bioethics of Built Health Care Spaces
Around the world, an alarming percentage of Covid-19 deaths occurred in long-term care facilities. Some of these deaths may have been avoided by changes in design. It's time that bioethicists to take a closer look at the built health care environment.Bioethics Forum Essay
Before We Turn to Digital Contact Tracing for Covid, Remember Surveillance in the Sixties
Is it unrealistic to believe that phone apps for digital Covid contact tracing can be designed and regulated in ways that prevent the information they collect from being misused? It's worth remembering surveillance of Vietnam War protesters and Martin Luther King Jr.Read “Before We Turn to Digital Contact Tracing for Covid, Remember Surveillance in the Sixties”
CALLAHAN LECTURE
Advancing Health Equity, and Community
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Covid-19 Underscores Racial Disparity in Advance Directives
Older black Americans are half as likely as older whites to have advanced directives. My patient, a black man in his 70s,, first made his wishes known when he was in the hospital with Covid-19.Read “Covid-19 Underscores Racial Disparity in Advance Directives”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Confusing Equity for Ethics Standards: Where Do We Go from Here?
The country’s leading hospital accreditation body recently eliminated the only performance standard that governed clinical ethics services. We argue the removal of the ethics standard requires additional review, and we have three recommendations.Read “Confusing Equity for Ethics Standards: Where Do We Go from Here?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Bioethics: Back to the USSR?
Will bioethics continue to exist and in what form? In the United States, where the discipline is most developed and institutionalized, it is under pressure.Bioethics Forum Essay
Covid-19 and Deafness: Why the Protocols Fall Short
I am hard-of-hearing; I wear two hearing aids, and Covid-19 has made all forms of human interaction extraordinarily difficult.Bioethics Forum Essay
Public Reason, Public Schools, and Mask Mandates
In South Carolina, where I live, we are not just ignoring good arguments, but actually legislating on the basis of bad ones. The budget rule, Proviso 1.108, threatens the funding of schools that require masks.Bioethics Forum Essay
Public Health Officials and Gun Rights Advocates Must Work Together
In rural Virginia, where I live, there is strong support for the right to own and carry guns. For more than a decade, I have shared public health, mental health, and other scientific findings with the leadership of a statewide Second Amendment rights advocacy group, especially regarding the leading number of deaths by firearms: suicide. We do not agree on what firearms laws and policies might be or do to prevent suicides, but we have sustained our conversations and respectfully learned from each other’s point of view. Such conversations are hard to have.Read “Public Health Officials and Gun Rights Advocates Must Work Together”
Page
Delivering in Another Tumultuous Year
In 2021, as the country scrambled to decide how to allocate the Covid-19 vaccine, Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger led a national team to produce detailed guidance on vaccine ethics....Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethics of Placebo Controls in Coronavirus Vaccine Trials
Multiple candidate vaccines for coronavirus are being evaluated scientifically in a process of unprecedented speed, and thousands of individuals around the world have volunteered to participate in placebo-controlled phase III field trials. If, or when, one of these candidate vaccines is proved to be safe and effective and receives an emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, will it continue to be ethical to enroll participants in other coronavirus trials that randomize half of them to a placebo?Read “Ethics of Placebo Controls in Coronavirus Vaccine Trials”
SPRING APPEAL
Support our Work
This has been a year like no other. For all of us. Challenges raised by the pandemic, including tragic reminders of the health inequities deeply embedded in our culture, underscore...Bioethics Forum Essay
From Gene-Edited Embryos to Covid: China Faces Regulatory and Ethical Challenges
Over the last two years, China has updated some regulations on human genetic engineering and assisted reproduction and established a national committee to guide and supervise bioethics nationwide. But there are legal gaps in some of the regulations and tension between competing values: the desire to encourage new research and to potentially inhibit it by imposing stricter ethics regulations.Read “From Gene-Edited Embryos to Covid: China Faces Regulatory and Ethical Challenges”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Detention, Dignity, and a Call for Bioethics Advocacy
Read “Detention, Dignity, and a Call for Bioethics Advocacy”
Page
Faculty
Sana Baban is a Project Manager and Research Assistant at The Hastings Center. She is interested in a wide range of bioethical issues, such as transplant ethics, immigration and refugee...Bioethics Forum Essay
Covid is Surging. Most Young Children Are Still Unvaccinated
Children are returning to classrooms amid another wave of Covid cases, but some public health leaders have leaned into the message that “most of us” can ignore the continued presence of Covid by taking just “a few basic steps,” such as staying up to date with vaccinations. “Most of us,” however, does not include families with young babies, among other groups for whom these steps are unavailable or insufficient.Read “Covid is Surging. Most Young Children Are Still Unvaccinated”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Griefbots Are Here, Raising Questions of Privacy and Well-being
Hugh Culber is talking to his abuela, asking why her mofongo always came out better than his even though he is using her recipe. She replies that it never came...Read “Griefbots Are Here, Raising Questions of Privacy and Well-being”
Page
TRANSCRIPT: Should We Change “Chimeric” Human-Animal Research?
Transcript generated by machine and may contain errors Dani Paci Hi, all. Thank you for attending our webinar, Should We Change Chimeric Human Animal Research today. You will not be...Read “TRANSCRIPT: Should We Change “Chimeric” Human-Animal Research?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
An Evergreen Metaphor: Strachan Donnelley, Dan Callahan, and Environmental Ethics
The devastation of Hurricane Ida and the global threats of climate change are not on the fringe of bioethics. They call to mind the language of priority-setting typical of bioethics discourse. Who lives and who dies? What can be accomplished with prevention and more levees? And if more are built, how do we set priorities with limited resources?Read “An Evergreen Metaphor: Strachan Donnelley, Dan Callahan, and Environmental Ethics”
Hastings Center News
It’s Time to See Clinician Burnout for What It Is
“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...Hastings Center News
Disinformation, Trust, and the Role of AI: Highlights of Our Event
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...Read “Disinformation, Trust, and the Role of AI: Highlights of Our Event”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Prioritizing the “1a”: Ethically Allocating Scarce Covid Vaccines to Health Care Workers
Beginning this week, guarded vehicles loaded with the first Covid-19 vaccine authorized in the United States are fanning out to hospitals across the country. In vaccine prioritization protocols health care workers, along with nursing home residents, make up phase “1a” – those who are first in line to be vaccinated. While much attention has been paid to who should come next, less is known about how hospitals are allocating vaccine doses among their staff. For many medical centers, the first shipments will only be enough to vaccinate a fraction of their workers. Who goes first within the “1a” category, and how are such decisions made?Read “Prioritizing the “1a”: Ethically Allocating Scarce Covid Vaccines to Health Care Workers”
Page
2022 — A Year of Results
In the early days of 2022, doctors transplanted a pig heart into a dying 57-year-old man, a medical first. Hastings Center research scholar Karen Maschke cautioned against rushing into animal-to-human...Hastings Center News
Ethics Guidance Released on Access to Drugs in COVID-19 Response
Read “Ethics Guidance Released on Access to Drugs in COVID-19 Response”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Should Clinicians Ask Hospitalized Covid Patients Why They Aren’t Vaccinated?
The role of doctors, nurses and other clinicians is to treat patients without passing judgment and to fulfill their fiduciary duty. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has muddled these obligations.Read “Should Clinicians Ask Hospitalized Covid Patients Why They Aren’t Vaccinated?”
Page
2021-22 Sadler Scholars
Sadler Scholars are a select group of doctoral students with research interests relevant to bioethics who are from racial and ethnic communities underrepresented in this field in the United States....Page
Overcoming Ableism in Medical and Nursing Education
Co-Principal Investigators: Erik Parens, Liz Bowen Investigator: Mildred Solomon Funder: The Macy Foundation Equitable health care for all is a bioethical imperative. And discrimination against people with disabilities—ableism—stands in the...Hastings Center News
Improving Access Key to Improving Health Equity
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
In Search of an Ethical Constraint on Hospital Revenue
Hospitals' tactics for maximizing revenue may be legal, but they raise ethical concerns.Read “In Search of an Ethical Constraint on Hospital Revenue”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Diversity and Solidarity in Response to Covid-19
Covid-19 imposes burdens in different—but very serious—ways on different individuals and groups. We see it in policies that address what to do in the face of shortages of scarce resources. We begin by challenging a common claim—that people with disabilities as a group will be harmed by triage policies that consider patients’ prospect of medical benefit.Bioethics Forum Essay
Human Plasma and Bioethics Nationalism
The procurement of human plasma as a potential therapy for Covid-19 is one of the latest examples of bioethics nationalism, defined by Jonathan Moreno in this blog as “distinct bioethics standards [which] are formally proclaimed as a matter of right by a sovereign state.” The race for a Covid cure pushes at the weak seams in the international liberal order in much the same way that Covid appears to be pushing at health care systems.Bioethics Forum Essay
Philanthropy is Not Enough: Oil and Gas Giants Must Consider Medical Ethics
Given the well-known environmental and health risks of oil and gas drilling, oil and gas giants that enter developing nations routinely offset these risks with charitable investments. Are these investments sufficient? Do the funds go where they are needed? Answering this question raises ethical issues that need greater attention.Read “Philanthropy is Not Enough: Oil and Gas Giants Must Consider Medical Ethics”
Bioethics Forum Essay
California U-Turn on Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren
The California legislature appears to have caved to pressure from opponents of a Covid vaccine mandate for schoolkids. I’d prefer to think of it as a wise and strategic retreat from a battle that mandate advocates could not win.Read “California U-Turn on Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren”
Bioethics Forum Essay
A Secret to Restoring Trust in Vaccines
I am a bioethicist who became a local pro-vaccine activist in New York City to protect vulnerable communities from dangerous misinformation. I have spent much of my time trying to convince people not to believe what RFK Jr. has said.Bioethics Forum Essay
The Covid Threat No One Is Talking About: Wearing Scrubs in Public
The Covid-19 outbreak has forced health care providers, administrative officials, and the general public to each play their part in doing no harm to others. It may come as a surprise to many people, but health care workers may unknowingly spread Covid-19 in their communities simply by wearing scrubs in public.Read “The Covid Threat No One Is Talking About: Wearing Scrubs in Public”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Too Taboo to Contemplate? Refusing Covid Vaccination for Some People with Dementia
There are a whole lot of us who think that, if we had dementia and were unable to live independently, we would prefer death. The idea that someone suffering from dementia and confined to a nursing home might actually welcome death is apparently so taboo that it cannot be openly contemplated.Read “Too Taboo to Contemplate? Refusing Covid Vaccination for Some People with Dementia”
Bioethics Forum Essay
When It Comes to Rationing, Disability Rights Law Prohibits More than Prejudice
This week, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights resolved one of many civil rights complaints alleging discrimination on the basis of disability–the first instance of federal intervention to enforce civil rights laws in rationing protocols since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis. But more work is needed to protect patients with disabilities in the allocation of scarce medical resources.Read “When It Comes to Rationing, Disability Rights Law Prohibits More than Prejudice”
SPECIAL EVENTS
Re-opening the Nation, a Series of Hastings Conversations
Read “Re-opening the Nation, a Series of Hastings Conversations”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Tribute to Robert M. Veatch: Human Rights and Other Commitments
Robert M. Veatch, a bioethics pioneer and the first research associate at The Hastings Center, died on November 9. An overarching theme was his commitment to human rights.Read “Tribute to Robert M. Veatch: Human Rights and Other Commitments”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Vaccine Mandates for Kids: It’s Not Whether, But When
States and school boards around the country are engaged in a debate about whether to require middle and high school students to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19. The debate is not so much about whether to mandate. It's when to do so.Read “Vaccine Mandates for Kids: It’s Not Whether, But When”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Vaccine Hesitancy Is No Excuse for Systemic Racism
Fewer vaccines are going to Black people. While it’s easy to fall back on vaccine hesitancy as an excuse, systemic racism is to blame.Hastings Center News
New Guidance Released for Covid-19 Vaccine Allocation
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.Read “New Guidance Released for Covid-19 Vaccine Allocation”
Hastings Center News
Physicians Honored for Outstanding Care of Patients Near the End of Life
Read “Physicians Honored for Outstanding Care of Patients Near the End of Life”
COVID-19
We Must Test, and Do It Differently, to Re-open the Nation
Read “We Must Test, and Do It Differently, to Re-open the Nation”
Page
Ethics and Research in Resource-Poor Countries
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Research in Resource-Poor Countries As health problems and disease threats cross borders on a global scale, wealthy countries are increasingly funding and...Bioethics Forum Essay
Where is Clinical Ethics in the Revised Hospital Accreditation Standards?
The Joint Commission, which accredits our nation's hospitals, eliminated the sole element of performance that governed clinical ethics services. This decision impedes equity and undercuts progress toward fostering ethical practice in health care.Read “Where is Clinical Ethics in the Revised Hospital Accreditation Standards?”
CALLAHAN LECTURE
Advancing Social Justice, Health Equity, and Community
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...Read “Advancing Social Justice, Health Equity, and Community”
Page
Schedule
Click a day to view its schedule.All times in US Eastern.Page
2021 Center Highlights
In 2021, as the country scrambled to decide how to allocate the Covid-19 vaccine, Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger led a national team to produce detailed guidance on vaccine...SPECIAL EVENT SERIES
Health Equity, Racism, and This Moment in Time
Thursday, August 13, 2020, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM A Hastings Conversations event with: Richard Besser, President, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Herminia Palacio, President, The Guttmacher Institute Mildred Z....Bioethics Forum Essay
Motivated Ignorance: A Challenge for Science Communication and Democracy
Many people are deeply interested in the political process and awash in relevant information., but nevertheless often grossly misinformed, holding confident but unfounded opinions at odds with widely accessible evidence The recent riot at Capitol Hill is just one illustration–albeit a horrifying one–of such misinformation and its potential consequences. The anti-vaccine movement is another example.Read “Motivated Ignorance: A Challenge for Science Communication and Democracy”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Improving Linguistic Justice and Accessibility in Bioethics Work
Bioethicists should practice linguistic justice, making our work accessible to people by using relatable language. It's key to improving health justice.Read “Improving Linguistic Justice and Accessibility in Bioethics Work”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Turning Lemons into Lemonade: Studying the Emotional Impact of Clinical Ethics Consultation
At some point, it occurred to me that I could actually research the emotional burden of ethics cases on clinical ethicists. This was an epiphany.Read “Turning Lemons into Lemonade: Studying the Emotional Impact of Clinical Ethics Consultation”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethical Medicine Means Getting Political
Dilemmas that clinicians face in the coronavirus pandemic–who gets the ventilator, the 80-year-old grandmother or the 20-year-old student?–are the bread and butter of mainstream bioethics. In medical school, my classmates and I memorized the four principles (beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, and autonomy), which we were told would help us make hard clinical decisions in ethically ambiguous terrain. But Covid-19 shows that medical ethics means much more than what generally falls under bioethics. Medical ethics is deeply political, and to act ethically in medicine means engaging the larger context in which it operates.Bioethics Forum Essay
Ashamed to Be Vaccinated? The Ethics of Health Care Employees Forgoing Unfair Priority
Suppose you are young, healthy, employed in a health care system and that your line of work does not require leaving the low-risk comfort of your home. Now suppose that your employer offers you a vaccine. You know there are others in your community who are at greater risk of contracting and dying from Covid-19 than you. Should you accept the dose?Read “Ashamed to Be Vaccinated? The Ethics of Health Care Employees Forgoing Unfair Priority”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Another Pragmatic Public Health Decision
There has been much criticism of the decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to let Covid-infected people who are feeling better to stop quarantining after five days and simply wear a mask. But this sort of pragmatic decision has a long history in public health.Bioethics Forum Essay
Bioethics and Black Lives: A Call for Bioethics to Speak Against Racial Injustice
George Floyd could not breathe while his neck was trapped under the knee of a police officer for nearly nine minutes. Yet despite the impressive scholarship of bioethics on ventilation and other technologies that prolong human breathing capabilities, it is largely silent on the suffocating effects of racism. Bioethics must speak out against racial injustice.Read “Bioethics and Black Lives: A Call for Bioethics to Speak Against Racial Injustice”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethics and Evidence in the Search for a Vaccine and Treatments for Covid-19
In the rush to find a Covid-19 vaccine and one or more drugs to treat the deadly disease, concerns are being raised that ethical standards for conducting human clinical trials and the evidentiary standards for determining whether interventions are safe and effective, might be loosened.Read “Ethics and Evidence in the Search for a Vaccine and Treatments for Covid-19”
Hastings Center News
Bioethics Chats: I. Glenn Cohen
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...Bioethics Forum Essay
Exhortations to Trust Biomedical Experts: What’s Missing?
Disagreements among biomedical experts regarding whether the scientific evidence supports delaying the second shot of Covid-19 vaccines or pausing the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines because of very rare side effects bring to the fore missing aspects in exhortations to trust biomedical experts.Read “Exhortations to Trust Biomedical Experts: What’s Missing?”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Masks Are Not Created Equal
Finally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working on developing standards for masks to see which ones actually block viruses. In the meantime, though, we should all be acting on what we do know about the effectiveness of various masks against Covid.NEWS
Center Names Vardit Ravitsky New President
The Hastings Center Board of Trustees today announced that Vardit Ravitsky, PhD, a leading bioethicist whose career has focused on the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technologies, will...Bioethics Forum Essay
Show Me Your Passport: Ethical Concerns About Covid-19 Antibody Testing as Key to Reopening Public Life
Around the world, governments are looking for safe ways to lift unprecedented restrictions on public activities to curb the spread of Covid-19. So-called immunity passports could be key to the effort to selectively ease restrictions for people presumed to be immune to the virus. But there are scientific and ethical questions to be worked out before they can be deployed. .Page
Re-Opening the Nation: What Values Should Guide Us?
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 12.07.10 Cognitively-Impaired Human Research Subjects Need Better Protection
(Garrison, NY) Practices for protecting human research subjects with Alzheimer’s disease and other conditions that make them incapable of giving informed consent are widely variable and in need of more concrete...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 12.07.10 Cognitively-Impaired Human Research Subjects Need Better Protection”
From Bioethics Briefings
Abortion
A central philosophical question in the abortion debate concerns the moral status of the embryo and fetus. If the fetus is a person, with the same right to life as any human being who has been born, it would seem that very few, if any, abortions could be justified, because it is not morally permissible to kill children because they are unwanted or illegitimate or disabled. However, the morality of abortion is not settled so straightforwardly. Even if one accepts the argument that the fetus is a person, it does not automatically follow that it has a right to the use of the pregnant woman’s body. Thus, the morality of abortion depends not only on the moral status of the fetus, but also on whether the pregnant woman has an obligation to continue to gestate the fetus.From Bioethics Briefings
Newborn Screening
Framing the Issue State newborn screening programs test nearly all infants born in the United States for selected inherited and congenital conditions that may cause disability or death. Screening is...From Bioethics Briefings
Stem Cells
Framing the Issue Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that have the capacity to renew themselves and to specialize into various cell types, such as blood, muscle, and nerve cells. Embryonic...In the Media
Hastings Scholars in the New Yorker
The New Yorker publishes a letter by Nancy Berlinger and Michael Gusmano about an article on a migrant caregiver and the global ethics questions raised.Expert Contributor
Benedetto Vitiello, MD
Expert Contributor
Arthur Caplan
Bioethics Forum Essay
“Beware the Ides of March” 2.0
The ancients looked to omens and portents to recognize signs of impending death. Today we do not rely on the ominous words of soothsayers, interpreting the entrails of chickens, or...Page
Having Conversations about Organ Donation
While 90 percent of participants in a 2005 Gallup poll indicated that they would donate an organ if asked, only 40 percent of Americans have registered to do so, according...Bioethics Forum Essay
Evaluating Recommendations to Increase Organ Donation
While the U.S. system of organ donation and transplantation is in a state of growth for the fifth year in a row, the call for new strategies to accelerate that...Read “Evaluating Recommendations to Increase Organ Donation”
Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 10-13-15 Hastings Center Informs NYC Plan for Immigrant Health Care Access
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan to improve health care access for immigrants in the nation’s largest city, incorporating the principal recommendation from The Hastings Center and the New...Read “MEDIA ADVISORY: 10-13-15 Hastings Center Informs NYC Plan for Immigrant Health Care Access”
Page
PRESS RELEASE: 07.18.11 New Grant Supports Hastings Work on Ethics of Medical Research with Animals
(Garrison, NY) The Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund awarded The Hastings Center a $159,000 grant to explore the ethical, scientific, and legal issues on using animals in medical research...Hastings Center News
New Project to Expand Research Hub on Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Advances in Human Genomics
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)...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Motivated by Money? The Impact of Financial Incentive for the Research Team on Study Recruitment
Biomedical research is a very competitive arena. Investigators not only compete for internal and external funding for their clinical trials, but also for healthy people or patients to enroll in...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
OHRP Compliance Oversight Letters: An Update
In this article, we describe our review of 235 compliance oversight determination letters that the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) issued to 146 institutions between August 1, 2002, and...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Ideal vs. Real: Revisiting Contraceptive Guidelines
We read, with interest, the lead article in the September-October 2010 issue of IRB: Ethics & Human Research.1 We are grateful to Chris Kaposy and Françoise Baylis for keeping the important issue of the...Our Team
Reed V. Tuckson
Reed V. Tuckson is a co-convener of the Coalition for Trust in Health and Science, which is dedicated to bringing together the entire health-related ecosystem to address mistrust and misinformation....Page
Ethics and Conflicts of Interest
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research and Clinical Practice Financial relationships can create conflicts of interest between researchers’ obligations to abide by...Page
MEDIA ADVISORY: 10.12.10 Seminar on Treating Mental Disorders in Poor and Vulnerable Children
Please join us for an October 15 seminar, Treating Mental Disorders in Poor and Vulnerable Children, co-sponsored by The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute, and Brooklyn Law School’s Center for Health,...Read “MEDIA ADVISORY: 10.12.10 Seminar on Treating Mental Disorders in Poor and Vulnerable Children”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Increasing Common Rule Protections: IRB Consensus, Black Box Warnings, and Risk in Equipoise
On July 26, 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published proposed changes to the Common Rule, the federal regulation that governs much of the federally funded...Read “Increasing Common Rule Protections: IRB Consensus, Black Box Warnings, and Risk in Equipoise”
Bioethics Forum Essay
ChatGPT Just Makes Stuff Up: A Conversation on a Controversial Topic
I am currently writing up the results of a retrospective chart review of patients’ consent or refusal for medical students to perform pelvic exams on them when they’re under anesthesia and sedated. I asked ChatGPT to summarize the ethical issues and tell me what sources it used to generate its response.Read “ChatGPT Just Makes Stuff Up: A Conversation on a Controversial Topic”
Page
Vascular Biology 2015
October 18-22, 2015 Vascular Biology 2015 will deliver presentations in cutting edge research in cardiovascular biology. This unique cross-disciplinary meeting provides distinct perspectives and approaches to what are often common...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Public Comments on Proposed Regulatory Reforms That Would Impact Biospecimen Research: The Good, the Bad, and the Puzzling
In July 2011 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) published in theFederal Registeran Advance Notice of Proposed Rule Making (ANPRM) entitled “Human Subjects Research Protections: Enhancing Protections...Page
Ethics and Organ Transplantation
Selected resources on from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Organ TransplantationThe central philosophical question in organ transplantation is how to ensure a fair and just system for the allocation of...Page
Intensive Bioethics Course
April 11-15, 2016 This 5-day advanced bioethics course is specifically designed for people charged with resolving potentially complex ethical challenges with little ethics training. This unique course emphasizes learning-by-doing where...Page
The Center for ELSI Resources and Analysis (CERA) Human Genomics Research Hub
Principal Investigators: Mildred Cho, Stanford University, and Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, Columbia University Co-Investigator: Josephine Johnston and Nancy Berlinger, The Hastings Center Funder: National Human Genome Research Institute Start date: September 2024...Read “The Center for ELSI Resources and Analysis (CERA) Human Genomics Research Hub”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Waivers and alterations to consent in pragmatic clinical trials: Respecting the principle of respect for persons
Is it ever ethical to conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) without consent?1This surprising question is increasingly being asked2owing to great interest in RCTs that compare widely used “standard” treatments...Page
Ethical Issues in Genomics
The Hastings Center conducts research and produces public engagement activities on a wide range of ethical questions in genomics. Ethical questions raised by genetics are among the Center’s foundational issues,...Hastings Center News
Hastings Center Organizes Symposium for International Journalism Conference: Ethical Debates on New Genetic Technologies
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...Hastings Center News
Reed V. Tuckson Joins Hastings Board
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...Page
Ethics and the Genomics
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Genomics, Behavior, and Social Outcomes Within the past decade, sequencing of the human genome and the rapid development of large-scale DNA testing...Bioethics Forum Essay
He Jiankui: A Sorry Tale of High-Stakes Science
In response to news of the world’s first babies born in China from gene-edited embryos, Sam Sternberg, a CRISPR/Cas9 researcher at Columbia University, spoke for many when he said “I’ve...Page
Ethics & Human Research
Ethics & Human Research (formerly IRB: Ethics & Human Research) aims to foster critical analysis of issues in science and health care that have implications for human biomedical and behavioral...Page
Bioethics and Torture
Selected resources from The Hastings Center. Bioethics Briefings: Torture: The Bioethics Perspective Torture is the intentional infliction of physical or psychological harm by a public official working in an official...Page
Media Advisory: Precaution and Governance of Emerging Technologies
Precautionary approaches to governance of emerging technology, which call for constraints on the use of technology whose potential harms and other outcomes are highly uncertain, are often criticized for reflecting...Read “Media Advisory: Precaution and Governance of Emerging Technologies”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Including Persons with Alzheimer Disease in Research on Comorbid Conditions
Alzheimer disease is a progressive neurodegenerative condition that affects 4.5 million people in the United States, with the number expected to rise dramatically over the next fifty years due to...Read “Including Persons with Alzheimer Disease in Research on Comorbid Conditions”
IRB: Ethics & Human Research
Reformed Consent: Adapting to New Media and Research Participant Preferences
The principle of respect for persons clearly demands that investigators communicate with potential research participants in a way that fosters comprehension of the information relevant to deciding whether to enroll...Read “Reformed Consent: Adapting to New Media and Research Participant Preferences”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Health Workers as Pawns of Warfare
Last week, NPR reported a major humanitarian group’s decision to stop treating patients from detention centers in Misrata, Libya. According tothe report,“torture was so rampant that some detainees were brought...Bioethics Forum Essay
Businesses, Guns, and Human Rights
The mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., resulted in the deaths of 17 people. Tragically, from January 1 to March 21, 2018, there were 3,088...IRB: Ethics & Human Research
A Consent Form Template for Phase I Oncology Trials
Download Consent Form Template (Spanish) The two primary components of the consent process for research are a consent form and a discussion between the investigator and the potential research participant....Page
PRESS RELEASE: 10-15-15 New in the Hastings Center Report
Emotion and reason in the enhancement debate, questions about gene editing, and more in the September-October 2015 issue. Don’t Mind the Gap: Intuitions, Emotions, and Reasons in the Enhancement Debate Alberto...Read “PRESS RELEASE: 10-15-15 New in the Hastings Center Report”
From Bioethics Briefings
Brain Injury: Neuroscience and Neuroethics
Framing the Issue The national conversation over Terri Schiavo illustrated how questions about severe brain injury became central to the past decade’s most convulsive bioethics debate. As is well appreciated...From Bioethics Briefings
Conscience Clauses, Health Care Providers, and Parents
Framing the Issue Conscientious objection in health care is the refusal of a health care professional to provide or participate in the delivery of a legal, medically appropriate health care...Read “Conscience Clauses, Health Care Providers, and Parents”
From Bioethics Briefings
Law Enforcement and Genetic Data
Framing the Issue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC8rd6onHts Watch “Law Enforcement and Genetic Data: A Discussion for Journalists” with writer Sarah Zhang at The Atlantic, Ellen Wright Clayton, an internationally recognized leader in the...From Bioethics Briefings
Biobanks: DNA and Research
Framing the Issue With recent advances in molecular biology, human biospecimens have become enormously valuable for medical researchers. Biospecimens such as blood, surgical tissue, saliva, and urine contain genetic material...Our Team
Lourena De Abreu
Lourena De Abreu joined The Hastings Center in April 2025. She is currently completing a master’s degree in bioethics at Harvard Medical School. She graduated from Howard University in 2023,...Our Team
Sana Baban
Sana Baban joined The Hastings Center in June 2023. She received her MBE from Harvard Medical School and BA in communication sciences and disorders from the University of South Florida.During...Our Team
Ava Randel
Ava Randel joined The Hastings Center in April 2025. Before coming to the Center, she taught ethics as an adjunct faculty member at New Jersey Institute of Technology and Montclair...Our Team
Virginia A. Brown
Virginia A. Brown is a research scholar in social justice and population health. She joined The Hastings Center in September 2023 from the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical...Our Team
Ryan Sauder
Ryan Sauder joined The Hastings Center in 2020 as chief advancement officer and became chief strategy and advancement officer in 2024. Working with a talented team, he oversees fundraising and...Our Team
Gregory E. Kaebnick
Gregory E. Kaebnick explores questions about the values at stake in developing and using biotechnologies and, particularly, in questions about the value given to nature and human nature. He is...Bioethics Forum Essay
Daniel Callahan – A Remembrance
Our Team
Karen J. Maschke
Karen Maschke has expertise on the ethical, regulatory and policy issues involving the development, assessment, and use of new biomedical technologies. She is the editor-in-chief of The Hastings Center’s journal Ethics...Our Team
Thomas H. Murray
Thomas H. Murray was president of The Hastings Center from 1999 to 2012. He was formerly the director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics in the School of Medicine at...From Bioethics Briefings
Climate Change
Framing the Issue No issue demands greater care in balancing benefits and risks than responding to the threat of global climate change. Data indicate that global surface temperatures have risen...Our Team
Susan Gilbert
Susan Gilbert is the director of communications of The Hastings Center and editor of Hastings Bioethics Forum. Before joining The Hastings Center in 2007, she was an editorial consultant and...Our Team
Briana Lopez-Patino
Briana Lopez-Patino joined The Hastings Center in August 2023. She received her BA from Binghamton University with a major in philosophy. She was a research assistant in the Human Sexualities...Our Team
Laura Haupt
Laura Haupt, with Gregory Kaebnick, edits the Hastings Center Report. She is also a consulting editor for Ethics & Human Research. From 2013 until 2024, she was the managing editor...Our Team
Nora Porter
Nora Porter has been the Center’s art director for the past 20 years. She is responsible for the design of the Center’s publications, promotional and development materials, and website graphics....Our Team
Siofra Vizzi
Siofra Vizzi joined the Hastings Center in 2010 as the development assistant and became manager of individual giving and special events in 2016. She also serves as the in-house photographer...Our Team
Jodi Fernandes
Jodi Fernandes has been with The Hastings Center since 1998 in administrative support roles that have spanned various departments including research, development, and finance, in addition to having primary responsibilities...Our Team
Deborah Giordano
Our Team
Emily Sanders
Emily Sanders joined The Hastings Center as grants manager in April 2024. She spent approximately nine years as dean of strategic integrations and initiatives at Madison Area Technical College, where...Bioethics Forum Essay
Ethics at the Chocolate Factory
Two women are being trained for work on a factory assembly line. As products arrive on a conveyor belt, their task is to wrap each product and place it back...Our Team
Ian Stevens
Ian Stevens joined The Hastings Center in June 2024. Before coming to Hastings, he was a research assistant in Oregon Health & Science University’s Human Electrophysiology Lab. He graduated from...Our Team
Carolyn P. Neuhaus
Carolyn P. Neuhaus explores philosophical and ethical questions that arise throughout biomedical research and medical practice, from the philosophical foundations of the use of animals in biomedical research to the development...Our Team
Vardit Ravitsky
Vardit Ravitsky, PhD, is the President and CEO of The Hastings Center, an independent, nonpartisan bioethics research institute that is among the most prestigious bioethics and health policy institutes in...Our Team
Carol O’Reilly
Our Team
Faith Wershba
Faith joined The Hastings Center in August 2024. She graduated from the University of Toronto in 2023 with a double major in human biology and immunology and a minor in...Our Team
Bethany Brumbaugh
Our Team
Chelsea Lopez
Chelsea joined The Hastings Center in 2024 in a new position in which she helps manage all aspects of fundraising, communications, and public engagement. She spent nearly 10 years as the...Our Team
Danielle Pacia
Danielle M. Pacia focuses on bioethics topics related to individualized therapies, community health, and the ever-changing landscape of reproductive health care in the United States. She is interested in high-level...From Bioethics Briefings
Nature, Human Nature, and Biotechnology
Framing the Issue From genetically modified foods to assisted reproduction to gene drives, an increasing number of social debates feature moral views about nature—claims, that is, that a naturally occurring...From Bioethics Briefings
Clinical Trials
Framing the Issue Clinical research with human participants utilizes a systematic approach to help understand human health and illness in order to find safe and effective ways to prevent, diagnose,...Expert Contributor
Erika Blacksher, PhD
Our Team
Julie Chibbaro
Julie Chibbaro is a long-time teacher, mentor, and editor. She is the author of three novels, and numerous short stories and articles. Her books have won the American Book Award, the...Bioethics Forum Essay
Measles, Vaccination, and the Tragedy of the Commons
After having been virtually eliminated in the United States in the year 2000, measles have made a comeback, with nearly 150 cases in 17 states and nearly 30 confirmed cases of the...Bioethics Forum Essay
Vaccine Exemptions and the Church-State Problem
The current measles outbreak has brought public attention to the ease with which vaccine exemptions are available. As the media continually inform us, 48 states allow for religious exemptions, while...Bioethics Forum Essay
Responding to Ebola: Health Care Professionals’ Obligations to Provide Care
As health care institutions in the United States prepare for Ebola patients, many have adopted the policy that those providing hands-on care should come from a pool of volunteers. Given...Read “Responding to Ebola: Health Care Professionals’ Obligations to Provide Care”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Responding to Ebola: Misplaced Police Powers
A number of states have recently adopted mandatory quarantine measures, including New York and New Jersey, for any individual entering the United States who had direct contact with someone infected with Ebola. This...Bioethics Forum Essay
Responding to Ebola: Questions about Resuscitation
While details of the deaths of patients in Dallas and Madrid from Ebola are not public, their passing prompts questions about resuscitation in individuals infected with the virus. To date,...Bioethics Forum Essay
Responding to Ebola: Retrofitting Governance Systems
In a recent New York Times op-ed, David Brooks observes that governance, in the form of multilateral organizing, is missing from the response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Unfortunately, global...Bioethics Forum Essay
Responding to Ebola: Fostering Transparency and Inclusivity
Media reports indicate that seven individuals have received ZMapp to date, two of whom have died. The first recipients were two American health care workers from Liberia who were treated...Read “Responding to Ebola: Fostering Transparency and Inclusivity”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Romanian Orphans: A Reconsideration of the Ethics of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project
Recently I had a Susan Reverby moment. Reverby is the Wellesley historian best known for unearthing the revelations of the Guatemalan syphilis and gonorrhea studies conducted by the United States Public Health...Read “Romanian Orphans: A Reconsideration of the Ethics of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Responding to Ebola: The Question of Quarantine
Dr. Craig Spencer, the first person in New York confirmed to have Ebola, is a clearly dedicated and selfless physician who worked for Doctors Without Borders in West Africa helping...Bioethics Forum Essay
New York’s Measles Outbreak: Take Off Your Shoes and Roll Up Your Sleeve
Today’s New York Times reported a rare outbreak of measles in New York City. Because the disease was mostly eradicated by 2000, most clinicians were baffled by the high fevers, rash, and respiratory...Read “New York’s Measles Outbreak: Take Off Your Shoes and Roll Up Your Sleeve”
Bioethics Forum Essay
Lessons from Ebola: Presidential Bioethics Commission Releases Recommendations on Preparedness for Public Health Emergencies
This week the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues released a brief, Ethics and Ebola: Public Health Planning and Response,to the administration and the public on ethical preparedness for...Expert Contributor
Michele S. Garfinkel, PhD
Expert Contributor
Gerald L. Epstein, PhD
Expert Contributor
Robert M. Friedman, PhD
Expert Contributor
Mark S. Frankel
Expert Contributor
Cristina J. Kapustij
Expert Contributor
Carol Levine
Expert Contributor
Lynn Friss Feinberg, MSW
Expert Contributor
Myra Glajchen, DSW
Expert Contributor
Jennifer McGuirl
In the Media
What Are Key Theories and Issues in Bioethics?
Josephine Johnston, The Hastings Center’s director of research, and Elizabeth Dietz, a project manager and research assistant, compiled essential readings in the field of bioethics for JSTOR Daily, including topics...In the Media
CRISPR Craze — Albino Lizards Gene-Edited
Speaking to PBS's NOVA , Hastings Center research scholar Carolyn Neuhaus said scientists shouldn't keep using CRISPR gene editing technology on new species "just because it's there"Expert Contributor
Donald M. Berwick, MD
In the Media
What Does the New Religious Exemptions Law Mean for Your Health Care?
Hastings Center scholar Nancy Berlinger told the PBS NewsHour that conscience objections by health care providers, which were expanded under regulations finalized in early May by the Department of Health and Human Services, can lead to certain medical procedures becoming stigmatized, leading to worse treatment or deterring patients from seeking treatment at all.Read “What Does the New Religious Exemptions Law Mean for Your Health Care?”
Expert Contributor
Eric G. Campbell, PhD
