Its mission is to address ethical issues in health care, science, and technology.[3] Through its projects and publications and its public engagement, the Center aims to influence the ideas of health policy-makers, regulators, health care professionals, lawyers, journalists, educators, and students.[4]
The Center is funded by grants and private donations.[5][6]
In the early years, the Center identified four core issues as its domain: population, including respect for procreative freedom; behavior, which responded to early discoveries about the brain-behavior link and efforts to find ways to modify behaviors and prompted reassessment of what is "normal"; death and dying, including the ongoing controversy over defining death; and ethical issues in human genetics.[9] The Hastings Center continues to work on these issues and has expanded to other areas, including the human impact on nature, governance of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, genomics, CRISPR gene editing, and wise and compassionate health care.
Publications
The Hastings Center publishes two journals, the Hastings Center Report,[10][11] and Ethics & Human Research (formerly IRB: Ethics & Human Research, founded in 1979).[12][13] Each journal is published six times per year. The Hastings Center Report, founded in 1970, features scholarship and commentary in bioethics. It also periodically features special reports, published as supplements, many of which grow out of the Center's research projects. Ethics & Human Research aims to foster critical analysis of issues in science and health care that have implications for human biomedical and behavioral research.[14]
Hastings Bioethics Forum is the Center’s online publication that publishes individual commentaries on current issues in bioethics.[15]
Bioethics Briefings[16] is a free online Hastings Center resource for students, journalists, and policymakers on bioethics issues of high public interest, such as abortion, brain injury, racism and health equity, organ transplantation, physician-assisted death, and stem cell research. The chapters are written by leading ethicists and are nonpartisan, describing topics from a range of perspectives that are grounded in scientific facts.[17]
Research
The Hastings Center's projects, many of which are carried out by interdisciplinary research teams, focus on four areas: the human lifespan, health and health care, science and technology, and the environment.[18]
Research projects consist of seminar-style meetings that bring together people with diverse views and expertise to address issues that pose dilemmas and challenges to society. Recent projects produced reports that include Envisioning a More Just Genomics, which explores how individuals will benefit equitably from advances in human genomics, The Ethical Implications of Social and Behavioral Genomics, which makes recommendations for responsibly conducting and communicating controversial research on the genetic contributions to human social and behavioral characteristics; Time to Rebuild: Essays on Trust in Health Care and Science, looks at trust and trustworthiness in science and health care. A Critical Moment in Bioethics: Reckoning with Anti-Black Racism through Intergenerational Dialogue, calls on the field of bioethics to take the lead in efforts to remedy racial injustice and health inequities in the United States..[19]
New Hastings Center research focuses on the ethical implications of artificial intelligence in health care. Hastings Center president Vardit Ravitsky is a principal investigator on two Bridge2AI research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health. One project is looking at the use of AI to help diagnose and treat diseases such as cancer and depression by analyzing the sound of a patient’s voice. The other project seeks to improve understanding of the relationship between genetics and disease expression. The Hastings Center website lists AI-related research projects, and articles and essays published by the Center’s journals and written by its scholars, as well as events held to explore this issue.[20]
The Robert S. Morison Library, located at the Center's offices in Garrison, New York, serves as a resource for Hastings' scholars, fellows, and visitors.[21]
Influence
The Hastings Center is recognized as having established bioethics as a field of study.[22]
The Hastings Center's 1987 "Guidelines on the Termination of Life-Sustaining Treatment and the Care of the Dying" was foundational in setting the ethical and legal framework for U.S. medical decision-making.[23][24] It was cited in the 1990 Supreme Court ruling in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, which established patients' constitutional right to refuse life-sustaining treatment and affirmed that surrogates could make decisions for patients lacking that capacity. An updated, expanded edition, The Hastings Center Guidelines for Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment and Care Near the End of Life, was published in 2013.[25]
In April 2024, new ruling by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that requires teaching hospitals to get written consent from patients before undergoing intimate medical exams was informed by findings published in the Hastings Center Report.[26]
Hastings Center research scholars are frequently called upon for policy advice by committees and agencies at both the federal and state levels.[22] Recent examples include Hastings Center president Vardit Ravitsky, who is serving on the National Academy of Medicine’s Leadership Consortium, the Health Care Artificial Intelligence Code of Conduct (AICC), The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Gene Drives on the Horizon report, which was produced by a committee that included Hastings Center senior research scholar Gregory Kaebnick,[27] and the National Academies Physician-Assisted Death workshop, whose planning committee included Hastings Center senior research scholar Nancy Berlinger.[28]
Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, The Hastings Center convened a national team of health care experts to produce three timely guidance documents for health care institutions to use when making difficult decisions about scarce resource allocation during the pandemic. The guidelines were used as references for health care organizations, lawyers, and journalists.
The Hastings Center has taken a lead in addressing racial injustice in the field of bioethics with two key educational initiatives, the Sadler Scholars, and the Summer Bioethics Program for Underrepresented Undergraduates. The Sadler Scholars are a select group of doctoral students with research interests in bioethics who are from racial or ethnic groups underrepresented in disciplines relevant to bioethics. The Summer Bioethics Program for Underrepresented Undergraduates is a paid, five-day online program for undergraduate students from groups that are underrepresented in bioethics.
Hastings Center fellows are elected for their contributions to informing scholarship or public understanding of the complex ethical issues in health, health care, and life sciences research.[29]
Dan W. Brock, Lee Professor Emeritus of Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, the former Director of the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School.
Arthur Caplan, Mitty Professor of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center.
Ezekiel Emanuel, Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, founding chair of the Department of Bioethics of the National Institutes of Health.
Jonathan D. Moreno, U.S. member of the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee, David and Lyn Silfen University Professor and Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Robert Truog, Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Medical Ethics, Anaesthesiology & Pediatrics and Director of the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School.
Awards
The Bioethics Founders' Award
The Hastings Center's Bioethics Founders' Award (formerly called the Henry Knowles Beecher Award) [32] recognizes people who have made a lifetime contribution to ethics and life sciences. A committee of Hastings Center Fellows convenes to nominate candidates for the award. Its inaugural recipient was Henry K. Beecher.
The Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician and Nursing Awards
The Hastings Center and the Cunniff-Dixon Foundation established The Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician and Nursing Awards, which recognize doctors and nurses who give exemplary care to patients nearing the end of life.[33]
^ abCallahan, D. (December 17, 1989). "Two Decades as 'Honest Brokers' for Medicine's Moral Issues". The New York Times. Vol. 33, no. 1. pp. 11–20. doi:10.1007/s11017-011-9202-0. PMID22198414.
^Committee on Gene Drive Research in Non-Human Organisms: Recommendations for Responsible Conduct; Board On Life, Sciences; Division on Earth Life Studies; National Academies Of Sciences, Engineering (June 8, 2016). Gene Drives on the Horizon: Advancing Science, Navigating Uncertainty, and Aligning Research with Public Values. Nap.edu. doi:10.17226/23405. ISBN978-0-309-43787-5. PMID27536751.
