Dependence

The Hastings Center Report's September-October 2023 issue is about relying on others—on loved ones, clinicians, scientists, and institutions. The lead article explores how loving relationships support and reshape the agency of people who have dementia. Authors Eran Klein and Sara Goering argue that the understanding of agency as a shared, relational capacity has implications for the development of treatments for dementia, the role of caregivers, and the structuring of patients’ environments. In the second article, Anthony Wrigley and colleagues examine whether providers of assisted reproductive technologies market “add-on” interventions by inappropriately exploiting their patients’ profound hope for a baby. Published with this issue of HCR is a special report, guest edited by health policy scholar Lauren A. Taylor and colleagues, on the need to rebuild public trust in science and health care.