Over the last decade, more U.S. taxpayers money has been spent trying to anticipate and address the bioethical issues raised by advances in human genetics than any other set of issues in the field. Does this make sense? Not everyone in bioethics thinks so. Some think there are more important topics, like issues of health care justice, that will be neglected if the field continues to follow the money to dwell on the moral challenges of a relatively small community of (...) research scientists. Others decry genetic exceptionalism as inappropriately singling out this scientific enterprise for criticism and regulation, when the same issues are faced even more acutely in other parts of the biomedical world. Human genetics is not accelerating as fast as pharmacology, for example, or as easy to abuse as virology, or as philosophically challenging as neurology. (shrink)

Over the last decade, more U.S. taxpayers money has been spent trying to anticipate and address the bioethical issues raised by advances in human genetics than any other set of issues in the field. Does this make sense? Not everyone in bioethics thinks so. Some think there are more important topics, like issues of health care justice, that will be neglected if the field continues to follow the money to dwell on the moral challenges of a relatively small community of (...) research scientists. Others decry genetic exceptionalism as inappropriately singling out this scientific enterprise for criticism and regulation, when the same issues are faced even more acutely in other parts of the biomedical world. Human genetics is not accelerating as fast as pharmacology, for example, or as easy to abuse as virology, or as philosophically challenging as neurology. (shrink)

This essay argues that the field of bioethics should concern itself especially with the process of making moral sense that unfolds among clinicians, patients and family members during common but high-stakes conversations occurring on the front lines of practice. The essay outlines the parameters of a bioethics grounded in the moral experience of patients, families and practitioners. It challenges ethicists, educators, and clinician leaders to commit themselves to advocating and developing creative approaches to learning that will cultivate the moral sensibilities (...) of frontline clinicians in this critically important domain of practice. (shrink)

We seek to bring Black bodies and lives into full view within the enterprise of Indigenous health research to interrogate the unquestioned good that is taken to characterize contemporary Indigenous health research. We articulate a Black bioethics that is not premised upon a false logic of beneficence, rather we think through a Black bioethics premised upon an unconditional love for the Black body. We achieve this by examining the accounts of two Black mothers, fictional and factual rendering visible the racial (...) violence Black bodies have been subjected to. We call for a Black bioethics that reimagines the Black body as beautiful and belonging—to both someone and somewhere. (shrink)

Health disparities are primarily driven by structural inequality including systemic racism. Medical educators, led by the AAMC, have tended to minimize these core drivers of health disparities. Ins...