Thinking Together

Over email a few days after the death of Daniel Callahan, cofounder of The Hastings Center and for many years its director and then president, Joseph Fins, a longtime Hastings colleague, offered this comfort: "[H]enceforth every issue of the Report is a living memorial to Dan the writer, editor, and institution builder." In the Hastings Center Report's first issue, published in June 1971, Dan stated, "To say that [the work of the Report] must be multi-disciplinary is only to say the issues [it will address] are as complex as human beings themselves." This July-August 2019 issue continues the tradition Dan began. An essay by Laura Guidry-Grimes expands on the importance of interdisciplinary conversations and problem solving-and attends to the complexity of human beings-in recalling a patient who was failed by multiple social institutions. In the lead article, a team of authors led by James Sabin identifies a challenge to conducting ethical research within learning health organizations, where research and care are integrated with the aid of patient data from health insurance providers.