Hastings Center

About: Hastings Center is a nonprofit organization based out in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Health care & Bioethics. The organization has 124 authors who have published 555 publications receiving 11625 citations.

Neurocognitive enhancement: what can we do and what should we do?

Abstract: Our growing ability to alter brain function can be used to enhance the mental processes of normal individuals as well as to treat mental dysfunction in people who are ill The prospect of neurocognitive enhancement raises many issues about what is safe, fair and otherwise morally acceptable This article resulted from a meeting on neurocognitive enhancement that was held by the authors Our goal is to review the state of the art in neurocognitive enhancement, its attendant social and ethical problems, and the ways in which society can address these problems

Ethics and Public Health: Forging a Strong Relationship

Abstract: The field of bioethics arose in the late 1960s in response to the emerging ethical dilemmas of that era. The field for many years focused in general on the dilemmas generated by high-technology medicine rather than on issues of population health and the ethical problems of public health programs and regulations. The time has come to more fully integrate the ethical problems of public health into the field of public health and, at the same time, into the field of bioethics. Public health raises a number of moral problems that extend beyond the earlier boundaries of bioethics and require their own form of ethical analysis.

The ethics of using quality improvement methods in health care.

Abstract: Quality improvement (QI) activities can improve health care but must be conducted ethically. The Hastings Center convened leaders and scholars to address ethical requirements for QI and their relationship to regulations protecting human subjects of research. The group defined QI as systematic, data-guided activities designed to bring about immediate improvements in health care delivery in particular settings and concluded that QI is an intrinsic part of normal health care operations. Both clinicians and patients have an ethical responsibility to participate in QI, provided that it complies with specified ethical requirements. Most QI activities are not human subjects research and should not undergo review by an institutional review board; rather, appropriately calibrated supervision of QI activities should be part of professional supervision of clinical practice. The group formulated a framework that would use key characteristics of a project and its context to categorize it as QI, human subjects research, or both, with the potential of a customized institutional review board process for the overlap category. The group recommended a period of innovation and evaluation to refine the framework for ethical conduct of QI and to integrate that framework into clinical practice.

Disability rights critique of prenatal genetic testing: reflections and recommendations.

Abstract: Using prenatal tests to prevent the birth of babies with disabilities seems to be self-evidently good to many people. Even if the testing will not help bring a healthy baby to term this time, it gives prospective parents a chance to try again to conceive. To others, however, prenatal testing looks rather different. If one thinks about the history of our society's treatment of people with disabilities, it is not hard to see why people identified with the disability rights movement might regard such testing as dangerous. For the members of this movement, living with disabling traits need not be detrimental to an individual's prospects of leading a worthwhile life, or to the families in which they grow up, or to society at large. Although the movement has no one position on prenatal diagnosis, many of its adherents believe that public support for prenatal diagnosis and abortion based on disability contravenes the movement's basic philosophy and goals.