Hastings Center Report

Last year, in this space, I wrote that I looked forward to compiling the index for the 2008 volume of the Hastings Center Report. Perhaps I overstated the matter, but all the same, it was interesting, once again, to get a birds' eye perspective of what ended up appearing in these pages. I had offered, last year, a few comments about what I hoped to see in our pages. Of course, my influence over what we publish is limited. What we end up with depends partly on what people send in and on what other people say about what they send in: we do not solicit articles, and we put all articles through blind peer review before bringing them to our editorial committee; many essays also come in over the transom and undergo blind outside review. Nonetheless, I hoped to encourage submissions and begin to generate essays and columns on certain topics.

So how did my wish list pan out? As I had hoped, we published somewhat less this year about the field of bioethics itself. The focus seems to have shifted from what bioethicists think and how they work to the issues that they think about and work on. In particular, we featured more about medical interventions and medical practice, including newborn screening, electronic medical records, physicians' work hours, options for care at the end of life, and organ transplantation. Also as I had hoped, these pieces sought to set out recommendations for practice, where feasible. We also published an article on stem cell research that had a practical focus; it considered whether research on the current NIH-approved cell lines adhered to appropriate standards for informed consent.

I also called for less discussion of theory. We did publish at least one highly theoretic piece this year-a discussion of the nature of moral values and moral reasoning, aimed at exploring whether concerns about altering human nature, or about the human relationship to nature generally, can fit into moral deliberation. It was unvarnished metaethics. I had submitted it to the journal myself, however, so, uh, no complaints, I guess. In addition, we published several pieces that explored the theoretic foundations of research ethics, continuing a trend that has now stretched over several years. This is theory put to use, not theory for its own sake, as it has practical implications for how we think about and review research protocols.

Finally, I hoped that HCR would feature more about health policy and public health issues. This we have certainly done.

I would be pleased to see HCR continue these trends, not only exploring philosophical questions raised by medicine, medical research, and health policy, but also developing findings that have practical relevance, feeding into the conduct of medicine, the review of research, and the formulation of health policy.

At some point in this coming volume, we hope to feature some essays examining the ethical issues of developing and enforcing practice guidelines. And there are signs that concerted action on health insurance reform may be on the way even quite early in 2009 (and that the action might be focused in the Senate, not in the new administration). We'll see. If so, we hope to be there. [End Page 2]