Hub at Oxford for Psychedelic Ethics
Psychedelic ethics for bench, bedside and bill.
HOPE is an interdisciplinary research group working on the ethics of psychedelics in research, in the clinic, and in law and policy: we bring scientists, clinicians, and lawmakers together to develop practical, consensus-driven guidance for ethically-informed practice as psychedelics move into medicine and society.
About
Evidence-informed ethics for ethically-informed practice.
HOPE — the Hub at Oxford for Psychedelic Ethics — is an interdisciplinary research group working on the ethics, law, and social policy of psychedelics. Established at Oxford in 2023 and now hosted at Johns Hopkins, it brings together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to develop ethical frameworks for the responsible integration of psychedelics into medicine and society. What began as a 2023 gathering at Oxford has since grown into an international collaboration spanning Oxford, Johns Hopkins, and partner institutions, whose researchers have helped set the global agenda for the field.
Our work addresses questions including informed consent in clinical trials, integration practices, research oversight, therapeutic boundaries, and policy development across medical and non-medical contexts. We favour collaborative, consensus-driven scholarship that translates ethical analysis into practical guidance, expressed through our published work, our convenings, and contributions such as our response to a Congressional Request for Information on psychedelic medicine.
People
Our core team, senior advisors, and a wider circle of collaborators.
Core Team
Eddie Jacobs
A postdoctoral fellow in psychedelic science at Johns Hopkins' Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, he holds the world's first PhD in psychedelic ethics, completed with Wellcome Trust funding at the University of Oxford. He coordinated the development of HOPE's foundational Consensus Statement, and his work has appeared in the American Journal of Bioethics, the BMJ, and The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. He also teaches ethics on practitioner-training courses and writes The Ethics Corner for The Psychedelic Practitioner.
David B. Yaden
The Roland R. Griffiths Professor of Psychedelic Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a faculty member of its Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, he is also a Research Associate at the University of Oxford. His research characterises the acute subjective effects of psychedelics and their capacity to affect well-being and worldview, alongside their therapeutic potential; he leads clinical and experimental psilocybin trials. He is co-author of The Varieties of Spiritual Experience (Oxford University Press).
Brian D. Earp
A leading neuroethicist and Associate Professor of Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore, with more than a decade of research in psychedelic ethics. He is Director of the Oxford–NUS Centre for Neuroethics and Society, Associate Director of the Yale–Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics. He is co-author of Love Drugs: The Chemical Future of Relationships (Stanford University Press).
Katherine Cheung
A PhD student in Bioethics and Health Policy at Johns Hopkins and a former Health Science Policy Analyst at the National Institutes of Health, with an MA in Bioethics from NYU. Her research examines the ethics of psychedelic-assisted therapy and the role of meaningfulness in medicine, and she drafted the HOPE Working Group's response to a Congressional Request for Information on psychedelic therapies.
Senior Advisors
Lori Bruce
Brings public and community voices into bioethics, leading community-engaged deliberation on emerging medical questions.
Keisha S. Ray
A prominent voice on race, justice, and health equity in contemporary bioethics.
I. Glenn Cohen
Among the world's most influential scholars of health law, biotechnology, and bioethics.
Holly Fernandez Lynch
An authority on research ethics, FDA regulation, and the oversight of clinical trials.
Neil Levy
A prolific philosopher working at the intersection of psychology, cognition, and ethics.
Affiliated Researchers
Visiting Alumni
Publications
Selected work from the group and its collaborators.
A selection of recent publications on psychedelic ethics, law, and policy involving members of the group. Each title links to a Google Scholar search.
Show publicationsHide publications
As psychedelic treatments get leaner, patients' social environments deserve attention. Preprint
Reclaiming the Matrix: The Importance of the Social Environment in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy. Preprint
Are Psychedelics Ethically Exceptional After All? Some Further Reflections. The American Journal of Bioethics 26(5), W19–W25.
Psychedelics are still not ethically exceptional: rebutting recent claims of uniqueness. Neuroethics 19(1), 18.
Adolescent Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy: Addressing Ethical and Clinical Challenges Through a Systems-Psychological Lens. Acta Psychedelica.
Psychological support can be distinguished from psychotherapy: Clarifications for future empirical work. General Hospital Psychiatry 99, 30–40.
Analyzing the concept of independence in psychedelic research. Accountability in Research.
Enhanced independence: De-biasing processes in psychedelic research and beyond. Research Ethics 22(1), 57–80.
Balancing safety and access in Oregon's psilocybin services. International Journal of Drug Policy 155, 105384.
Psychedelic medicine: mechanisms, evidence, and translation to practice. BMJ 392.
Love and cause: When is biomedically enhanced love desirable?. Journal of Applied Philosophy.In press
Advancing the Field of Psychedelic Epidemiology. Psychedelic Medicine 4(2), 154–156.
The psychosocial environment as therapeutic context: Family-centered approaches to adolescent psychedelic research. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology 35(3), 171–172.
Distinctive but not exceptional: The risks of psychedelic ethical exceptionalism. The American Journal of Bioethics 25(1), 16–28.
Excusing Psychedelics and Accommodating Psychedelics. The American Journal of Bioethics 25(1), 107–109.
Gaps in US Psychedelic Policy and How to Close Them. JAMA Health Forum 6(11), e254928.
Informed Consent Documents from Psychedelic Clinical Trials: A Descriptive Ethical Analysis. AJOB Empirical Bioethics 16(4), 247–266.
Clinical psychedelic research in adolescents: a scoping review and overview of ethical considerations. The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health 9(10), 744–752.
Clinical Psychedelic Therapy Research Involving Adolescents: Protocol for a Scoping Review of Intervention Studies. Wellcome Open Research 10, 334.
Psychedelics beyond medicine: Treatment, enhancement, hype, consent, and the limits of medicalization. Philosophical Psychology 38(7), 3340–3383.
Holding Without Touch: Supportive Touch in Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy. The American Journal of Bioethics 25(1), 117–120.
Social Value Communication Amidst the "Hype" of Psychedelic Research. The American Journal of Bioethics 25(8), 107–110.
Psychedelic Treatment with Psilocybin: Addressing Medical Malpractice Risk and Physicians' Concerns. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 53(2), 256–264.
Commentary: A framework for assessment of adverse events in psychedelic research. Journal of Psychopharmacology 39(5), 431–433.
Moral enhancement and cheapened achievement: Psychedelics, virtual reality and AI. Bioethics 39(3), 276–287.
Psychedelics as moral bioenhancers: Protocol for a scoping review of ethical arguments for and against. Wellcome Open Research 10, 3.
On minimizing risk and harm in the use of psychedelics. Psychiatric Research and Clinical Practice 7(1), 4–8.
Trip sitting or just sitting? Session facilitators substantially influence psychedelic experiences in clinical trials but not in healthy ones. Working paper.Preprint
Causal Inference in Studies with Functional Unmasking: Psychedelics and Beyond. medRxiv.Preprint
The Hopkins–Oxford Psychedelics Ethics (HOPE) Working Group Consensus Statement. The American Journal of Bioethics.Flagship
Psychedelic group-based integration: Ethical assessment and initial recommendations. International Review of Psychiatry 36(8), 891–901.
UK medical students' self-reported knowledge and harm assessment of psychedelics and their application in clinical research: a cross-sectional study. BMJ Open 14(3), e083595.
When the trial ends: the case for post-trial provisions in clinical psychedelic research. Neuroethics.
Psychedelics, meaningfulness, and the "proper scope" of medicine: continuing the conversation. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 33(4), 601–607.
Commentary: On the need for metaphysics in psychedelic therapy and research. Frontiers in Psychology 14, 1341566.
Valuing the acute subjective experience. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 67(1), 155–165.
Transformative experience and informed consent to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Frontiers in Psychology 14, 1108333.
Toward a Broader Psychedelic Bioethics. AJOB Neuroscience 14(2), 126–129.
Psychedelics as potential catalysts of scientific creativity and insight. Drug Science, Policy and Law 8.
Public attitudes to psilocybin-assisted therapy. Drug Science.
A potential role for psilocybin in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Journal of Psychedelic Studies 4(2), 77–87.
Convening
An annual gathering that turns discussion into guidance.
An annual gathering bringing together scientists, practitioners, ethicists, and others. These gatherings have produced consensus statements, policy recommendations, and formal evidence to lawmakers. They are held under the Chatham House Rule, so we share their outputs rather than what was said, or by whom.
2025 Hopkins–Oxford Psychedelic Ethics Meeting Oxford Union, August 2025 +
2024 Hopkins–Oxford Psychedelic Ethics Summit Washington, D.C., 17–18 August 2024 +
2023 Inaugural Hopkins–Oxford Psychedelic Ethics Workshop University of Oxford, August 2023 +
Join the group
We welcome researchers who want to think carefully about these questions with us.
HOPE can host a small number of visiting researchers who bring their own funding. If you are a doctoral student or postdoctoral researcher with an independent or portable fellowship and interests that align with our work, we would be glad to hear from you.
Get in touch →- Visiting doctoral students with independent or portable funding
- Postdoctoral researchers holding their own fellowship
- Visiting scholars in bioethics, philosophy, law, or the psychedelic sciences