Happy Birthday, Hastings Center
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- June
- 23
The Hastings Center, the first bioethics think tank, is celebrating its 40th birthday.
Westchester’s own Daniel Callahan, president emeritus, co-founded the center in 1969 in…where else?…Hastings. At the time, it was called the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences.
The center has since moved to Garrison, but still uses its married name.
There are now many bioethics departments and think tanks, in this country and around the world. And many leading bioethicists have a connection to the Hastings Center.
According to an editor’s note in the current Hastings Center Report:
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The Hastings Center came into being the year that Woodstock took place and “Hair” debuted on Broadway. Like these iconic events, it was a child of the sixties. It began as a grass roots effort—cofounders Daniel Callahan and Willard Gaylin hatched the idea at a neighbor’s Christmas party in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, in 1968. At the time, Callahan, a philosopher, was working for the Population Council on ethical problems of population limitation and finishing a book on abortion. Gaylin, a psychiatrist, had published books and articles on social problems.
Their idea was revolutionary both because the Center would be the first organization of its kind and because it would be the product of a biological revolution. Developments such as organ transplantation and genetic testing were changing lives, reshaping society, and posing ethical dilemmas that cried out for thoughtful analysis.
When the Center was incorporated in March 1969 as the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, the first challenge was to stake out its foundational issues. “We looked for topics that seemed to have a lifespan,” recalled Callahan. Population control, behavior control, death and dying, and genetics fit that description. Each topic had its own working group.
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So Happy Birthday, Hastings Center. May you stay 39 forever…
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 2:40 pm by Gary Stern.
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The world of religion, we don't have to tell you, is vast. The purpose of this blog is for Stern to note, flag and comment on some of the more interesting religious developments on the scene – weighty and quirky, somber and laughable, far away and just down the road. He won't interpret Scripture, take sides in conflicts or judge anyone. But he will take advantage of the journalist's license to observe.
