The Hastings Center
The Hastings Center 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.
Founding
The Hastings Center 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 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.
Research
The Hastings Center's projects, many of which are carried out by interdisciplinary research teams, focus on four areas: the human lifespan, health and health care, science and technology, and the 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. A Critical Moment in Bioethics: Reckoning with Anti-Black Racism through Intergenerational Dialogue, 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 research focuses on the ethical implications of artificial intelligence in health care. Hastings Center president Vardit Ravitsky is a principal investigator on two Bridge2AI 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 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.
Other Websites
https://www.thehastingscenter.org/