Upcoming event: Advancing Social Justice, Health Equity and Community; Hastings scholars on vaccine allocation

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January 11, 2021


** Advancing Social Justice, Health Equity, and Community
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Upcoming Hastings Center Event
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 communities, and there is growing momentum for racial reckoning not seen since the 1960s. Join Professor Patrick T. Smith of Duke University and Mildred Solomon, president of The Hastings Center, for an exploration of how thinking and insights afforded by Martin Luther King and the 20^th century civil rights movement might help redress today’s widespread suffering and health inequities. How can values like dignity, solidarity, community (or what King termed the “beloved community”) be useful today? What can we do to acknowledge King’s notion of an “inescapable network of mutuality?” The virtual event will take place on Tuesday, February 9, at noon. It is the second annual Daniel Callahan Public Lecture, supported by generous gifts from The John and Patricia Klingenstein Fund
and The Andrew and Julie Klingenstein Family Foundation. This year’s program is also part of The Hastings Center’s continuing series of webinars, “Securing Health in a Troubled Time.” Learn more and register here. Learn more and register. ([link removed])



** Who Should Get Vaccinated Next?
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Now that health care workers and others with top priority are receiving a Covid-19 vaccine, who should go next? State and local officials are deciding whether to adopt the recommendations of an expert panel. Hastings Center president Mildred Solomon applauded those recommendations—by the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices--for putting frontline workers ahead of older people ages 65 to 75. “This was a good decision,” Solomon wrote in The Hill. “The hardest ethical dilemmas are ones in which we must choose between equally worthy goals. Too often in such cases, we decide to pick one goal over the other. The ACIP avoided such simplistic thinking. They are explicitly valuing a return to normalcy and the importance of protecting against Covid-19 severity and death.” Read the commentary ([link removed]) .


** In the Media: Cutting the Covid Vaccine Line, Record-Breaking Birth
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When Moderna announced that it planned to give its workforce priority to get its Covid-19 vaccine, the decision raised some eyebrows. In an interview with CNN, Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger said that the situation presents an “ethical test” for people who have the chance to jump the queue. "If you can protect yourself, you should wait your turn, because this is one of those situations where the more people who use their access to go to the head of the queue, it actually starts slowing things down for other people," she said. Read the CNN article ([link removed]) .

Berlinger was also quoted in a Los Angeles Times editorial on Covid vaccine allocation that called for giving the greatest priority to those with the greatest risk of dying from Covid, including low-wage “essential” workers and others who because of their living or working situation are less able to avoid infection. “This is where we check our biases over who we find more important,” she said. Read the L.A. Times editorial ([link removed]) .

A record was set in human reproduction: the recent birth of a baby from the world’s oldest frozen embryo. Hastings Center research scholar Josephine Johnston told Healthline that births from frozen embryos are likely to become more common in the future and called for more research on the health and other effects on the babies and children born. “As a general matter it’d be helpful to have more long-term data on the health and other impacts of the use of reproductive technologies, including donor embryos,” she said. Read the Healthline article ([link removed]) .


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Upcoming Events
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"Advancing Social Justice, Health Equity, and Community," ([link removed]) the Daniel Callahan Annual Lecture, with Duke University professor Patrick T. Smith and Hastings Center president Mildred Solomon. February 9 at noon Eastern time on Zoom.

Learn More ([link removed])
The Hastings Center seeks to ensure responsible health and science policy and practice. We work to secure the wisest possible use of emerging technologies and fair, compassionate, and just health care for people across their lifespan.

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