This collection of essays is the first written product of The Hastings Center’s Initiative in Bioethics and the Humanities. This new initiative, which we created with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and private donors, has three aims. The first is to bring toget...

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.

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.

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.

On December 3, The Hastings Center will present the first in a series of public events in New York City that will explore how people with disabilities are using—or resisting—technologies to promote their own flourishing. The series is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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

Disability advocates and bioethicists have long debated whether it is appropriate for individuals, particularly prospective parents engaged in reproductive decision-making, to “choose disability,” as in the case of a deaf couple who would like to have a deaf child. In the current issue of the Ken...