January 23, 2020

Twelve Ethics Leaders Elected Hastings Center Fellows

The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 12 new Fellows, hailing from across the United States, Canada, and China. 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. Their common distinguishing feature is uncommon insight and impact in areas of critical concern to the Center. These areas include how best to understand and manage the inevitable values questions, moral uncertainties, and societal effects that arise as a consequence of advances in the life sciences, the need to improve health and health care for people of all ages, and mitigation of human impact on the natural world. Read more.

In the Media: Should "Cyborg" Technology Be Used to Treat Addiction?

Researchers are testing a novel approach to treating opioid addiction in patients for whom all other treatments have failed: embedding microchips into their brains to send electrical signals intended to stimulate chemical changes that reduce cravings. But is this so-called cyborg technology ethical? Hastings Center research scholar Gregory Kaebnick told USA Today that as a treatment for opioid addiction it raises ethical concerns. “It’s a little hard to see how a massive public health crisis can be effectively addressed by implanting electrodes in people’s brains,” he said. He also addressed the fact that the procedure is expensive—up to $75,000. “There’s no chance this is going to be an effective way to respond to the broad, societal epidemic. Read the article.

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