Applications are being accepted for The Hastings Center Summer Bioethics Program for Underrepresented Undergraduate Students, which will take place online from June 6-10. The program is for students who are underrepresented in bioethics, including but not limited to communities of color, Indigenous communities, residents of rural areas, and students with disabilities. Accepted students will receive a stipend and will have the opportunity to engage with distinguished scholars from around the country, develop skills in explaining and justifying their views on numerous topics, and learn how to listen with respect to divergent views. Application deadline: March 22. Learn more and apply.

The use of animal organs for humans has a long, dramatic, and often disappointing history. Following recent transplants with pig organs, Hastings Center research scholar Karen Maschke considers ethical, regulatory, and policy questions about how medical research studies with patients who have end-stage organ disease should proceed—and how quickly. For example, she says in an interview with Science News, expanding access to animal organs through a Food and Drug Administration “expanded access/compassionate use” treatment pathway could make it harder to find volunteers for clinical studies, potentially slowing down scientific discovery about the transplants. Maschke says, “you don’t want to derail the science—and the science is incremental.” Read the Science News article.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson last month told an audience of over 2,600 people at the health equity summit that one of the consistent outcomes of empirical studies is that too many medical professionals still believe that Black and brown people do not experience pain to the degree that white patients do and are less likely to receive pain medicine, even if they have end-stage cancer. “This is a complete breakdown not only in medicine; it’s a breakdown in humanity.” Read more.