Hastings Center Report最新文献

Medical science has delivered extraordinary advances during my forty-year career as a medical oncologist. But might the science's justified prestige unhelpfully diminish our respect for other needed forms for understanding the human experience? This is a critical issue for physicians, who may be present with patients at moments of profound existential challenge. By equating hope with scientific progress and limiting its own role to purveyor of the latest that science has on offer, the medical profession may unwittingly add to the burden on patients with advanced cancer. Humanistic understandings of hope drawn from philosophy, theology, and literature serve as essential—at their best, equally true—partners to the portrait offered by experimental science. Physicians, in their manner of interacting with patients, may serve as both messengers of and models for a deeper understanding of hope that fully embodies the significance of human life and sustains patients when they most need support.

This commentary responds to Erik Magnusson's Hasting Center Report article “Disability, Relational Equality, and the Expressivist Objection.” The commentary's author uses the setting of her classroom at Gallaudet University, the world's only bilingual American Sign Language and written English liberal education university serving deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing students, to explore the expressivist objection in the context of her students’ lived experience as deaf people. As Magnusson explains, the expressivist objection comprises two claims: that the provision or use of prenatal testing to select against having a child with a disability “expresses negative judgments about existing people with disabilities” and that the expression of such judgments wrongs these people. The commentary proposes the concern that solely focusing on the expressivist objection to prenatal diagnosis and testing can obscure other, related harms that deserve attention too.

On the cover: Stigmatized, by Paul Klee, 1935, watercolor on oil-impregnated gauze on cardboard, 30.8 × 27.5 cm.

© 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo © Superstock/Bridgeman Images.

Concerns about the human germline in the context of genome editing have been at the forefront of contemporary bioethics, with the clear recognition that the heritability associated with such intervention merits special moral consideration. In contrast, the question of moral responsibility for modifications of the germline genome that result from anthropogenic environmental toxicants has received little attention. Yet, whether the impact of human technological activity on enduring shifts in human heredity occurs via purposeful genetic modification or nondirected changes that undermine genome stability, the result is irreversible genetic change in future generations. This article argues that the robust ethical reflection developed by the bioethics community to address human heritable genome editing can be used as a resource to address understudied questions of moral responsibility for anthropogenic insults to the germline. Drawing on this bioethics work, the article outlines a future-oriented ethical framework for germline responsibility in a time of widespread concern about industrial chemicals and human futures.

In the coming years, we will be facing urgent and complex challenges—from climate change, aging societies, and structural inequities to the possible effects of emerging technologies like genomics and artificial intelligence. But, as the president of The Hastings Center for Bioethics, I remain optimistic because bioethics can play a crucial role in navigating this future. To be effective, the field must expand its scope, embrace systemic and global thinking, and foster inclusive conversations around divisive issues. The Hastings Center, now in its fifty-seventh year, is launching a five-year strategic plan that prioritizes promoting justice, overcoming collective-level barriers, and fostering trust and trustworthiness in science, biomedicine, and health care. Rooted in values like independence, rigor, and inclusiveness, the Center aims to translate conceptual analysis into real-world impact through actionable guidance developed collaboratively, partnerships, and public outreach. I envision a future where bioethics actively shapes just and responsible responses to such challenges, reaffirming its relevance in promoting health and flourishing across communities and nations.

Many participants in bioethical debate believe the long-standing myth about the religiously oriented members of the public—that they disagree with scientific fact claims about the natural world. While there are a few conflicts over such claims for a few religious traditions, largely concerning human origins, these fact claims are not relevant for bioethics. Instead, social science research has shown widespread moral conflict between scientists and the actively religious in the United States. The prevalence of moral conflict and the absence of fact conflict is illustrated by the Covid pandemic, where religious objections to vaccines were moral, not factual, in nature. It is important to accurately represent conflicts so that the public sees bioethical input to policy debates as legitimate.