The Hastings Center
[8] In the early years, the Center identified four core issues as its domain: population, including respect for procreative freedom; behavior, which responded to early discoveries about the brain-behavior link and efforts to find ways to modify behaviors and prompted reassessment of what is "normal"; death and dying, including the ongoing controversy over defining death; and ethical issues in human genetics.[9] The Hastings Center continues to work on these issues and has expanded to other areas, including the human impact on nature, governance of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, genomics, CRISPR gene editing, and wise and compassionate health care.[18] Research projects consist of seminar-style meetings that bring together people with diverse views and expertise to address issues that pose dilemmas and challenges to society.[22] The Hastings Center's 1987 "Guidelines on the Termination of Life-Sustaining Treatment and the Care of the Dying" was foundational in setting the ethical and legal framework for U.S. medical decision-making.[25] In April 2024, new ruling by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that requires teaching hospitals to get written consent from patients before undergoing intimate medical exams was informed by findings published in the Hastings Center Report.[22] Recent examples include Hastings Center president Vardit Ravitsky, who is serving on the National Academy of Medicine’s Leadership Consortium, the Health Care Artificial Intelligence Code of Conduct (AICC), The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Gene Drives on the Horizon report, which was produced by a committee that included Hastings Center senior research scholar Gregory Kaebnick,[27] and the National Academies Physician-Assisted Death workshop, whose planning committee included Hastings Center senior research scholar Nancy Berlinger.