November 30, 2021

Hubris and Omicron

“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’,” writes Hastings Center fellow Walter Glannon. Lederberg was referring to HIV, but Glannon sees SARS-CoV-2 and its variants as “a palpable example of the pathogenic threat to our existence.” Read “Pathogens and Humans.”

Together, Let's Make a Difference

Much of the Center’s work focuses on the importance of interdependence—from the need to work together to conquer a global pandemic to our embrace of the equal worth of all people. Like so much of our research and programming, Hastings’ funding model is also collaborative. We depend on people like you to support 45% of our budget each year. Please make a gift today by contributing online at www.thehastingscenter.org/give. Together, we will continue to make a difference.

Hastings Welcomes 24 New Fellows
Diverse Individuals and Accomplishments

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 informed scholarship and public understanding of complex ethical issues in health, health care, science, and technology. The new fellows come from six countries and a range of disciplines, including medicine, nursing, philosophy, law, American studies, and theater. Their research and other activities encompass diverse areas such as critical care medicine, conflicts of interests, clinical research ethics, genomics, artificial intelligence, philosophy of race, health equity, and social justice. Read more.

Precision Medicine and Diversity

A recent “Bioethics for Journalists” event discussed the massive U.S. government effort to make precision medicine a reality--targeting preventive care and medical treatment to individual patients based on their genetic and other data. A major component of this effort is the National Institutes of Health’s ‘All of Us’ Research Program, which is collecting health-related data from at least one million U.S. residents to help build a database of information from people of diverse backgrounds. More than 400,000 participants have been recruited so far, but there are many challenges to delivering precision medicine to diverse and inclusive communities—what Hastings Center research scholar Carolyn Neuhaus called the “last mile problem.” And a key feature of the program—telling participants the genetic information that the study discovers about them—itself poses formidable challenges. The event also featured Nidhi Subbaraman, a senior reporter for Nature; Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, a Hastings Center fellow who is chief of the division of ethics and a professor in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University; and Katherine Blizinsky, policy director for ‘All of Us’. Learn more and watch the event.

Upcoming Events

"The Role of Choice in Death and Dying in Late Life," Hastings Center scholar Nancy berlinger presents at a hybrid mini-symposium at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing. December 1.

"Pandemic Ethics: Reflections on Justice and the Common Good," a presentation by Hastings Center President Mildred Solomon at the Mayo Clinic, December 2.

"Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities," a Hastings Center event in collaboration with the Association of American Medical Colleges, the American Nurses Association, and the American Medical Association. January 19th & 20th, 2022.

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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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