Coronavirus Update:
Ethics Considerations, Guidance and Resources.
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Sudden illness or accident can happen to anyone at any time. These forms enable adults to appoint a health care agent and to document their priorities and preferences for future health care needs.
There may come a time when you are unable to speak for yourself. The best way to ensure that your wishes are known and honored is to talk with those closest to you and your health care providers about what matters most.
Start Taking Steps TodayMedical ethics is a field of study that draws from philosophy, law and medicine. There are four core principles in bioethics that define the ethical obligations that health care providers owe to patients. The application of these principles to individual cases can be helpful in resolving difficult questions that arise in health care.
Learn MorePalliative care is specialized care that is directed at managing the symptoms of those who are living with serious or advanced illness. It is appropriate for individuals who are seeking treatment for their disease, as well as for those who have shifted their goals to a more comfort-directed plan of care.
Learn MoreThis year has awakened us to the fact that we die. We’ve always known it to be true in a technical sense, but a pandemic demands that we internalize this understanding.
Read Article »There has been widespread agreement that health care workers and residents (and staff) of long-term care facilities should be at the very front of the line for the COVID-19 vaccine, and distribution to them is already underway. Now state and local officials will decide whether to adopt the recommendations of an expert panel on who goes next.
Read Article »Join The Hastings Center on Tuesday, February 9 at 12pm Eastern for a free webinar exploring how thinking and insights afforded by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 20th century civil rights movement might help redress today's widespread suffering and health inequities.
Learn More & Register »A successful ‘wrongful prolongation of life’ lawsuit in Montana, among other things, reflects the extent to which many Americans will go to gain — and enforce — their rights to control their final days.
Read Article »An article offering insight on the new variant of the coronavirus circulating in England and key considerations that have been left out of the headlines.
Read Article »In the early days of 2020, as news of a strange virus in Wuhan, China spread, it was The Hastings Center that provided an early preview of the challenges to come in a Bioethics Forum post by two Chinese physicians. As the virus swept throughout the world, the Center launched...
Read Article »An article shedding light on the role and work of ethics committees and bioethicists, and the particularly challenging role they have played during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read Article »Sickle cell disease afflicts about one hundred thousand Americans, the vast majority of whom are Black. It is a horrible disease that reduces life expectancy by about thirty years and can very adversely affect quality of life for the preceding forty years.
Read Article »Our colleagues at Taking Steps Brattleboro are offering free weekly Advance Care Planning Information Meetings via Zoom every Wednesday at 10am.
Learn More »In two recent talks, one at the National Institutes of Health and the other at the Washington-based Cosmos Club, Hastings Center president Mildred Solomon discussed the connection between systemic racism, other social determinants of health, and health inequities.
Read Article »Years before George Floyd begged to be released from under the knee of Officer Derek Chauvin, Barbara Dawson, a 57-year-old Black woman, died begging a police officer, John Tadlock, not to remove her oxygen mask. Her death occurred right outside the Calhoun Liberty Hospital in Blountstown, Florida, shortly before Christmas in 2015.
Read Article »View the results of our Ethics Survey for Vermont & New Hampshire conducted in the summer of 2019.
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