The Hastings Center

Last updated
The Hastings Center
Formation1969
Type Bioethics research institute
Location
President
 Vardit Ravitsky
Revenue$4,249,740 [1] (in 2022)
Expenses$4,469,935 [1] (in 2022)
Website www.thehastingscenter.org

The Hastings Center is an independent, nonpartisan bioethics research institute in Garrison, New York. [2]

Contents

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]

Founding

The Hastings Center was founded in 1969 by Daniel Callahan [7] and Willard Gaylin, originally as the Institute of Society, Ethics, and the Life Sciences. It was first located in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, and is now in Garrison, New York, on the former Woodlawn estate designed by Richard Upjohn. [8]

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.

Notable fellows, past and present

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]

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]

Related Research Articles

Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health, including those emerging from advances in biology, medicine, and technologies. It proposes the discussion about moral discernment in society and it is often related to medical policy and practice, but also to broader questions as environment, well-being and public health. Bioethics is concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, theology and philosophy. It includes the study of values relating to primary care, other branches of medicine, ethical education in science, animal, and environmental ethics, and public health.

Joseph J. Fins, M.D., D. Hum. Litt., M.A.C.P., F.R.C.P. is an American physician and medical ethicist. He is chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College, where he serves as The E. William Davis Jr., M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics, and Professor of Medicine, Professor of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine in Psychiatry. Fins is also Director of Medical Ethics and an attending physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center. Fins is also a member of the adjunct faculty of Rockefeller University and has served as Associate for Medicine at The Hastings Center. He is the Solomon Center Distinguished Scholar in Medicine, Bioethics and the Law and a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He was appointed by President Bill Clinton to The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy and currently serves on The New York State Task Force on Life and the Law by gubernatorial appointment.

Albert R. Jonsen was one of the founders of the field of Bioethics. He was Emeritus Professor of Ethics in Medicine at the University of Washington, School of Medicine, where he was Chairman of the Department of Medical History and Ethics from 1987 to 1999. After retiring from UW, he returned to San Francisco, where he co-founded the Program in Medicine and Human Values at Sutter Health's California Pacific Medical Center in 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Wikler</span> American philosopher

Daniel Isaac Wikler is an American public health educator, philosopher, and medical ethicist. He is currently the Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health in the Department of Global Health and Population of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. He is Director and a core faculty member in the Harvard Program in Ethics and Health (PEH). His current research interests are ethical issues in population and international health, including the allocation of health resources, health research involving human subjects, organ transplant ethics, and ethical dilemmas arising in public health practice, and he teaches several courses each year. He is a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution.

Jonathan D. Moreno is an American philosopher and historian who specializes in the intersection of bioethics, culture, science, and national security, and has published seminal works on the history, sociology and politics of biology and medicine. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

<i>Hastings Center Report</i> Bioethics journal

The Hastings Center Report is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal of bioethics. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Hastings Center. The editor-in-chief is Gregory Kaebnick. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2021 impact factor of 4.298. In 2018, it ranked it 5th out of 16 journals in the category "Medical Ethics".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Callahan</span> American bioethicist (1930–2019)

Daniel John Callahan was an American philosopher who played a leading role in developing the field of biomedical ethics as co-founder of The Hastings Center, the world's first bioethics research institute. He served as the Director of The Hastings Center from 1969 to 1983, president from 1984 to 1996, and president emeritus from 1996 to 2019. He was the author or editor of 47 books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Insoo Hyun</span>

Insoo Hyun is the Director of Research Ethics and a faculty member of the Center for Bioethics and senior lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He also serves as the Inaugural Director of the Center for Life Sciences and Public Learning at Boston's Museum of Science. As a Fulbright Scholar and Hastings Center Fellow, Dr. Hyun's interests include ethical and policy issues in stem cell research and new biotechnologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vojin Rakić</span> Serbian political scientist and philosopher

Vojin B. Rakic is a Serbian philosopher and political scientist. He publishes in English, but also in Serbian. He has a PhD in political science from Rutgers University in the United States. He has published on ethics, bioethics, Kant, and cosmopolitan justice.

Stephen Garrard Post has served on the Board of the John Templeton Foundation (2008-2014), which focuses on virtue and public life. He is a researcher, opinion leader, medical school professor, and best-selling author who has taught at the University of Chicago Medical School, Fordham University-Marymount, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (1988-2008) and Stony Brook University School of Medicine (2008-). He is widely known for his research on the ways in which giving can enhance the health and happiness of the giver, how empathy and compassionate care contribute to patient outcomes, ethical issues in caring for people with dementia, medical professionalism and the virtues, and positive psychology in relation to health and well-being. Post is an elected member of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the New York Academy of Medicine, and the Royal Society of Medicine, London. He was selected nationally as the Public Member of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Composite Committee (2000-2005), and was reappointed for outstanding contributions.

Human subject research legislation in the United States can be traced to the early 20th century. Human subject research in the United States was mostly unregulated until the 20th century, as it was throughout the world, until the establishment of various governmental and professional regulations and codes of ethics. Notable – and in some cases, notorious – human subject experiments performed in the US include the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, human radiation experiments, the Milgram obedience experiment and Stanford prison experiments and Project MKULTRA. With growing public awareness of such experimentation, and the evolution of professional ethical standards, such research became regulated by various legislation, most notably, those that introduced and then empowered the institutional review boards.

Michael Alan Grodin is Professor of Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights at the Boston University School of Public Health, where he has received the distinguished Faculty Career Award for Research and Scholarship, and 20 teaching awards, including the "Norman A. Scotch Award for Excellence in Teaching." He is also Professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine. In addition, Dr. Grodin is the Director of the Project on Medicine and the Holocaust at the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, and a member of the faculty of the Division of Religious and Theological Studies. He has been on the faculty at Boston University for 35 years. He completed his B.S. degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his M.D. degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and his postdoctoral and fellowship training at UCLA and Harvard University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">I. Glenn Cohen</span>

I. Glenn Cohen is a Canadian legal scholar and professor at Harvard Law School. He is also the director of Harvard Law School's Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics.

Jamie Lindemann Nelson is a philosophy professor and bioethicist currently teaching at Michigan State University. Nelson earned her doctorate in philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1980 and taught at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and St. John's University before moving to Michigan State University. In addition, Nelson was an Associate for Ethical Studies at The Hastings Center from 1990–95 and is both a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow and a Fellow of the Hastings Center. Nelson usually teaches courses on biomedical ethics, ethical theory, moral psychology, feminist theory, and philosophy of language.

The MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, founded in 1981, is a non-profit clinical medical ethics research institute based in the United States. Founded by its director, Mark Siegler, the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics aims to improve patient care and outcomes by promoting research in clinical medical ethics by educating physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals and by helping University of Chicago Medicine patients, families, and health care providers identify and resolve ethical dilemmas. The center has trained over 410 fellows, including many physicians, attorneys, PhDs and bioethicists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mildred Z. Solomon</span> American bioethics researcher

Mildred Z. Solomon is an American bioethics researcher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christine Mitchell</span> American filmmaker and bioethicist

Christine I. Mitchell is an American filmmaker and bioethicist and until her retirement in September 2022, the executive director of the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School (HMS).

Eric M. Meslin PhD is a Canadian-American philosopher-bioethicist and is the past President and CEO of the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Kilner</span>

John F. Kilner is a bioethicist who held the Franklin and Dorothy Forman endowed chair in ethics and theology at Trinity International University, where he was also Professor of Bioethics and Contemporary Culture and Director of Bioethics Degree Programs. He is a Senior Fellow at The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity (CBHD) in Deerfield, Illinois, where he served as Founding Director until Fall 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vardit Ravitsky</span> Bioethicist, researcher, and author

Vardit Ravitsky, an Israeli-Canadian, is a bioethicist, researcher, and author. She is president and CEO of The Hastings Center, a senior lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and past president of the International Association of Bioethics. She is a Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, where she chaired the COVID-19 Impact Committee. She is also a Fellow of The Hastings Center and of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Previously, she was a full professor at the University of Montreal, and director of Ethics and Health at the Center for Research on Ethics.

References

  1. 1 2 "The Hastings Center Inc" (PDF). Foundation Center. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 27, 2019. Retrieved February 27, 2019.
  2. ↑ "Charity Navigator Report". Charity Navigator. Archived from the original on February 3, 2015. Retrieved February 2, 2015.
  3. ↑ "Our Mission – The Hastings Center". The Hastings Center. Archived from the original on March 18, 2017. Retrieved March 17, 2017.
  4. ↑ "Hastings Scholars – The Hastings Center". The Hastings Center. Archived from the original on March 18, 2017. Retrieved March 17, 2017.
  5. ↑ "Hastings Center, Inc. – GuideStar Profile". guidestar.org. Archived from the original on February 29, 2012. Retrieved April 18, 2018.
  6. ↑ "Hastings Center Inc in Garrison, New York (NY) – NonProfitFacts.com". faqs.org. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved April 18, 2018.
  7. ↑ "Gustavus Adolphus College". Archived from the original on February 20, 2015. Retrieved February 20, 2015.
  8. ↑ "The Hastings Center Releases Second Edition of Guidelines". July 2, 2013. Archived from the original on February 3, 2015. Retrieved April 18, 2018.
  9. ↑ "at Forty: A Look at Its Founding Four Issues". The Hastings Center.
  10. ↑ "Medical Xpress – medical research advances and health news". medicalxpress.com. Archived from the original on March 14, 2018. Retrieved April 18, 2018.
  11. ↑ "Report". The Hastings Center. Retrieved September 7, 2012.
  12. ↑ "Ethics & Human Research". The Hastings Center. Archived from the original on July 3, 2019. Retrieved 2020-03-23.
  13. ↑ "IRB: Ethics & Human Research". The Hastings Center. Archived from the original on June 18, 2016. Retrieved September 24, 2012.
  14. ↑ "Ethics & Human Research". The Hastings Center. Retrieved 2024-12-12.
  15. ↑ "Hastings Bioethics Forum Blog – The Hastings Center". The Hastings Center. Archived from the original on March 8, 2017. Retrieved March 17, 2017.
  16. ↑ "Hastings Center Bioethics Briefings". The Hastings Center. Archived from the original on August 22, 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  17. ↑ "Bioethics Briefings". The Hastings Center. Retrieved 2024-12-12.
  18. ↑ "Current Projects – The Hastings Center". The Hastings Center. Archived from the original on March 18, 2017. Retrieved March 17, 2017.
  19. ↑ "Current Projects". The Hastings Center. Archived from the original on August 22, 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  20. ↑ "Ethics of AI in Health and Biomedical Research". The Hastings Center. Retrieved 2024-12-12.
  21. ↑ "Library Detail: The Hastings Center, Robert S. Morison Library – The NYSCA Literary Map of New York State and The NYSCA Literary Tree". nyslittree.org. Retrieved April 18, 2018.
  22. 1 2 Callahan, 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. PMID   22198414.
  23. ↑ Laurie Barclay, MD (May 12, 2013). "End-of-Life Care Guidelines Updated". Medscape.com. Archived from the original on December 2, 2019. Retrieved October 15, 2019.
  24. ↑ Berlinger, Nancy (May 24, 2013). The Hastings Center Guidelines for Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment and Care Near the End of Life (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-997455-9. Archived from the original on November 27, 2018. Retrieved September 19, 2019.{{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  25. ↑ "FindLaw's United States Supreme Court case and opinions". Findlaw. Archived from the original on April 6, 2022. Retrieved April 6, 2022.
  26. ↑ "New Federal Ruling Informed by Hastings Center Report Findings on Intimate Exams". The Hastings Center. 2024-04-04. Retrieved 2024-12-12.
  27. ↑ 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. ISBN   978-0-309-43787-5. PMID   27536751.
  28. ↑ "Physician-Assisted Death: Scanning the Landscape and Potential Approaches". Nationalacademies.org. Archived from the original on October 25, 2019. Retrieved September 20, 2019.
  29. ↑ "Fellows". The Hastings Center. Retrieved 2024-12-12.
  30. ↑ "Fellows". The Hastings Center. Retrieved 2024-12-12.
  31. ↑ "Fellows". The Hastings Center. Retrieved 2024-12-12.
  32. ↑ "Henry Knowles Beecher Award". The Hastings Center. Archived from the original on May 17, 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
  33. ↑ "Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician Awards". The Hastings Center. Archived from the original on September 4, 2019. Retrieved October 15, 2019.
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