A study on end-of-life decisions in severe dementia vs. normal cognition: with dementia, surrogates meant less burdensome treatment; advance directives and a single decision-maker mattered only with normal cognition.

A Hastings Center Report piece rethinking advance directives in dementia care, where the long gap between writing a directive and needing it strains the whole instrument.

A JAMA Health Forum viewpoint on Memorial Sloan Kettering's use of a MAID advisory council to guide institutional practice around aid-in-dying requests.

New in NEJM: a perspective on the paradox of medical aid in dying. Low utilization, but an expansion that reflects shifting expectations of dying and a desire for more control at the end of life.

A Journal of Medical Humanities piece on how narrative is configured differently in clinical reporting versus patients' embodied accounts of illness, and the case for blending that epistemic terrain.

Configuring Narrative in the Discourse of Health and Medicine

This article explores narrative as a feature of medical research writing and a means of incorporating patient-authored “perspectives” into the discourse of health and medicine. Focusing on published...

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I was honored to be invited and I'm excited to give this talk in August. I hope you can join us!

Ethical Disobedience: Harm, Futility, and the Slow Code | Center for Bioethics

This session will examine the ethical status of slow codes — resuscitation attempts intentionally performed without genuine effort — in cases where CPR is futile or medically inappropriate but where…

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A solid overview of moral distress and moral injury, distinguishing both from burnout and closing on structural remedies. Good for the classroom.

Sydney Halpern’s graphic novel "Infected for Science" (art by Trygve Faste) tells of WWII conscientious objectors who volunteered for hepatitis experiments.

About — SYDNEY HALPERN

Sydney Halpern, AuthorTrygve Faste, ArtistFeaturing the World War II cartoons of David H. Miller

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A JAMA Network Open study asks what really drives clinicians’ moral distress over nonbeneficial treatment — and points at institutional culture, not just hard cases.

New York has enacted medical aid in dying. Petrie-Flom’s Bill of Health walks through the law, including its unique video/audio recording requirement.

If physicians owe commitments to their institutions, those institutions owe something back. Health Affairs makes the case for an "ethics of institutional reciprocity."

The AMA now offers ethical guidance to physicians weighing a sale to private equity. Health Affairs on what happens when the business model itself is the ethics problem.

A Sociology of Health & Illness piece on the heuristics doctors use to manage the ambiguity of terminal illness and argues that the real role of hospice and palliative care docs in the medical division of labor is shifting toward values talk.

An argument that philosophical practice — structured, unhurried talk about the concepts in play — can complement formal ethics consultation at the end of life.

As assisted-dying laws multiply and diverge, clinical ethics holds much of the ambiguity. Wasson and colleagues map the patchwork and the role of ethics consults.

"The Clinical Brake" argues for restoring conscience as an active part of clinical judgment, not just an escape hatch for refusals, but I think the conflation of conscience and professional judgment muddies the waters. Everything in medicine is value-laden. "Conscience" calls out something else.

Fifty years on, the Karen Quinlan case is a reminder that families’ right to decide near the end of life was won, not given. The Conversation, useful for teaching.

50 years ago, Karen Quinlan’s coma sparked the movement for patients’ rights near the end of life

Karen Ann Quinlan fell into a coma in 1975. The high-profile legal case over her parents’ wish to remove her ventilator shapes American patients’ rights today.

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Prescribing for autistic patients means deciding under real uncertainty. This NEJM Perspective makes the case for shared decision-making as the honest response.

A NEJM Perspective offers a caregiver’s first-person account of hospice... complicating the tidy contrast between a peaceful home death and the technocratic ICU.

New human embryo-editing work is pushing against the field’s own limits. STAT on a call for a temporary moratorium on heritable gene editing.

New human embryo editing advances require tough conversations on ethical boundaries

Scientists can’t ignore the ethical complexities of new embryo editing advances.

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A new law would let hospice patients keep some aggressive treatments instead of the old all-or-nothing choice between cure and comfort. KFF on "concurrent care."

New Law Could Help Hospice Patients Continue Aggressive Medical Treatments - KFF Health News

People who are dying currently can't get Medicare to pay for hospice care if they continue aggressive curative treatment. But the new health overhaul law could lead to a major change in olicy that allows...

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Over 15M Americans past 55 have no spouse or kids, and nearly 2M have no family at all. KFF on the social and decision-making stakes of dying without kin.

An Age-Old Fear Grows More Common: ‘I’m Going To Die Alone’ - KFF Health News

As families fracture, people are living longer and are more likely to find themselves without close relatives or friends at the end of their lives.

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Are presidents entitled to medical privacy? Rosenthal argues that when fitness for duty is a public matter, they aren’t or at least not to the degree other patients are.

Clinical Ethics and a President’s Capacity: Balancing Privacy and Public Interest : The Hastings Center for Bioethics

The Biden Administration is struggling with a dilemma that has a clinical ethics component. Where does the President’s right to privacy about his health end and the public’s right to know begin? This...

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I was honored to be invited and I'm excited to give this talk in August. I hope you can join us!

Ethical Disobedience: Harm, Futility, and the Slow Code | Center for Bioethics

This session will examine the ethical status of slow codes — resuscitation attempts intentionally performed without genuine effort — in cases where CPR is futile or medically inappropriate but where…

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A Hastings Forum essay defends the word "provider" and asks who the pushback really serves — patients, or the medical hierarchy?

Physician or Provider? What’s in a Name? : The Hastings Center for Bioethics

The term we use for the people we turn to for healthcare has ethical ramifications.

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Devan Stahl's "Disability's Challenge to Theology: Genes, Eugenics, and the Metaphysics of Modern Medicine" is out in paperback from Notre Dame Press. Essential for anyone thinking about eugenics, old and new.

Disability's Challenge to Theology

Disability’s Challenge to Theology uses insights from disability studies to understand in a deeper way the ethical implications that genetic technologies p...

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Hastings Bioethics Forum on media coverage of a preprint claiming human embryo gene editing with startling precision. The issue isn't only the science, it's amplification ahead of peer review.

Off Target: Reporting on Human Embryo Gene Editing : The Hastings Center for Bioethics

Releasing this research ahead of peer review raises ethical concerns; it risks making human embryo gene editing appear safer and more inevitable than the evidence supports.

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A review in Nursing Ethics on nurses' perspectives on conscientious objection and the ethical challenges of abortion care. A reminder that conscience questions are lived out by clinicians, not just argued in theory.

Open access in Clinical Ethics: epistemic network analysis mapping the conflict between oral health and patient autonomy. A sharp look at synthesizing frameworks when stakeholders sit in different epistemic positions.

New AAP Committee on Bioethics reports on parental requests for potentially nonbeneficial treatment in life-threatening situations. A practical, stepwise framework.