Why Bioethics Has a Race Problem

Abstract

In the September‐October 2001 issue of the Hastings Center Report, editor Gregory Kaebnick encouraged bioethicists to turn their attention toward “easily overlooked, relatively little‐talked‐about societal topics” such as race. In 2000 the president of the American Society for Bioethics had called for a more socially conscious bioethics. Race was risky territory, Kaebnick pointed out, but this challenge did not justify avoidance. Over the next fifteen years, the response to this editor's invitation to examine the racial dimensions of medicine in the Report was limited both in quantity and in terms of the range of topics covered. All told, the bioethics community has not responded to the editor's call for bioethicists to engage with the racial dimension of medicine, and the Report has not really come through on the tacit commitment made in 2001. The lack of interest in race matters evidenced in the Report as well as the American Journal of Bioethics has also prevailed in medical humanities journals, whose few pieces on race have tended to remove race relations from our current realities in two ways: some articles locate medical racism in the American past or in colonial Africa, while others analyze the medical disorders of fictional characters. Bioethicists have not embraced the opportunity to create a sociologically and historically informed bioethics that might be applied to the lives of black Americans and their unending health crisis.

Lead Essay—Institutional Racism, Whiteness, and the Role of Critical Bioethics

“…In 2016, John Hoberman argued that “[b]ioethicists have not embraced the opportunity to create a sociologically and historically informed bioethics that might be applied to the lives of [racial minorities] and their unending health crisis” (Hoberman 2016 , 13). Indeed, the issue of institutional racism represents a long overdue topic of interest that requires attention within the discipline.…”

Race, Power, and COVID-19: A Call for Advocacy within Bioethics

“…Despite excellent scholarship and advocacy within bioethics, for the most part racism has been treated as a peripheral issue in mainstream bioethics discourse and generally has only been seen as central in seminal cases like the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. In support of this observation, authors including John Hoberman argue that a "fascination with Tuskegee" and other horrific events have truncated our awareness of the history, depth, and systemic character of American racism that goes beyond the events that occupy our political consciousness (Hoberman 2016). Instead of addressing oppression and violence as central and endemic issues within American society, bioethical literature prefers to consider race in "euphemistically tinged abstractions" such as "health care disparities," "minority health care," or "social justice" (Baker 2016).…”

COVID 19: Bioethics, the racial line and ethical praxis

“…Bioethics has a race problem, had argued the medical historian John Hoberman 5 , specialized in the history of medical racism. Hoberman researched the academic production of medicine and bioethics to trace the place of race in the field.…”

“…Looking at the prestigious Hastings Centre Report publications from 2001 to 2016, he found just one article which covered race and medicine in a broad sense 5 (12), that is, that did not deal with cases considered exceptional or focused on historical periods of overt racism, giving the impression that racism is something from the past. The same absence can be found in the American Journal of Bioethics, which in fifteen years has produced four articles or essays focused on race and medicine 5 (12).…”

“…Burton diagnoses this reality as racism and prescribes to include and listen to the black people (and communities) when discussing race in bioethics. The fact that she is one of few Black-American in the field is also telling of the need to hear from those affected by racism, which is not only directed to racialized patients but also to black and other minority members of the medical community 5 (15). When talking about race it is also important to deconstruct myths claiming that black people can endure more pain therefore they are provided with less anaesthesia and denied painkillers, what is reported by Hoberman in the US but has also been reported orally by the Migrants and Ethnic Minorities for Reproductive Justice in Ireland.…”