Hastings Center for Bioethics


The Hastings Center for Bioethics is an independent, nonpartisan bioethics research institute in Garrison, New York.
Its mission is to address ethical issues in health care, science, and technology. 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.
The Center is funded by grants and private donations. It was known as The Hastings Center before 2025.

Founding

The Hastings Center for Bioethics was founded in 1969 by Daniel Callahan 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.
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. The Hastings Center for Bioethics 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 for Bioethics publishes two journals, the Hastings Center Report, and Ethics & Human Research. 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.
Hastings Bioethics Forum is the Center’s online publication that publishes individual commentaries on current issues in bioethics.
Bioethics Briefings is a free online Hastings Center for Bioethics 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.

Research

The Hastings Center for Bioethics' projects, many of which are carried out by interdisciplinary research teams, focus on seven areas: Emerging and Established Biotechnologies, Health AI, Population and Community Health, Aging Societies and End of Life, Disability and Human Flourishing, Clinical Ethics and Research Ethics, and Our Changing Natural Environment.
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. , calls on the field of bioethics to take the lead in efforts to remedy racial injustice and health inequities in the United States.
New Hastings Center for Bioethics research focuses on the ethical implications of artificial intelligence in health care. Hastings Center for Bioethics President Vardit Ravitsky is a principal investigator on two 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 for Bioethics 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.
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.

Influence

The Hastings Center for Bioethics is recognized as having established bioethics as a field of study.
The Hastings Center for Bioethics' 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. 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.
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 in the Hastings Center Report.
Hastings Center for Bioethics research scholars are frequently called upon for policy advice by committees and agencies at both the federal and state levels. Recent examples include Hastings Center for Bioethics President Vardit Ravitsky, who is serving on the National Academy of Medicine’s Leadership Consortium, the , 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 for Bioethics senior research scholar Gregory Kaebnick, and the National Academies Physician-Assisted Death workshop, whose planning committee included Hastings Center for Bioethics senior research scholar Nancy Berlinger.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, The Hastings Center for Bioethics 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 were used as references for health care organizations, lawyers, and journalists.
The Hastings Center has pathway programs for early-career researchers and students who are interested in bioethics issues and careers. The Hastings Center are a select group of doctoral students and early-career scholars interested in bioethics research careers. The is a one-year remote opportunity for project-focused mentorship for early-career bioethics researchers in low and middle income countries and territories. The Hastings Center is a five-day live online program opportunity for undergraduates who are interested in bioethics issues and related careers who have limited opportunities for bioethics training.

Notable fellows, past and present

Hastings Center for Bioethics 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.