This volume aims to explore some of the practices, conflicts, negotiations and struggles at the interplay of bioethics and racism. This requires shedding light on the hegemonic power relationships that condemn some population groups to a condition of subjugation, suffering, and oppression. By unpacking notions that have been taken for granted and dismantling rhetorics that are veiled in discourses and rationales pertaining to race and racism, we highlight possible ways in which bioethics can operate across disciplinary boundaries and strengthen its connection with equity and social justice, which also entails striving for a "bioethics in action".

As COVID-19 spread across the United States, the bioethics community encountered challenges both familiar and unknown. Practitioners prepared to consult and advise clinicians, compiling lists of the anticipated bioethical issues, the dimensions of which were nuanced and multifaceted. However, a closer look at the discussion that developed around a single critical question, the ethics of ventilator allocation protocols, revealed that standard formulas and metrics had unintended consequences. The received wisdom of the ethical principles applied to the allocation of this scarce resource was questioned and found wanting as critics pointed out protocols that disadvantaged minorities, the disabled, and the elderly. New voices entered old debates. The practice of modern American bioethics, shaped at a time when patient autonomy was the prevailing value, was narrow in purview. The fundamental inequities of heath and healthcare experienced by racial and ethnic minorities and the poor, concerns of justice, were not central to the practice. The bioethics community had failed to sufficiently broaden its scope as the concepts of the social determinates of health were revealed by research and confirmed by lived experience. Prompted by the racial unrest of spring and summer 2020, one element of the bioethics community, represented by Association of Bioethics Program Directors, has recast its focus.

A maverick in the truest sense, Obiora Anekwe has been described as one of the most prolific and diverse intellectual scholars of his generation. Born in Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, reared during his early years and youth in Lagos, Nigeria and Columbus, Georgia, respectfully, Obiora embraces his full sense of self to interpret stories through art and writing. In his latest work, Collectively Speaking: Essays on Issues in Ethics, Obiora documents a decade’s worth of essays he wrote on issues related to education, bioethics, society, and the arts. His ability to allow language to tell the truth will attract readers to this book.

"Conference titled 'Symposium on African American Perspectives in Bioethics and Second Annual Conference on Health Disparities,' held on September 23-24, 2004, at Georgetown University"--P. viii.

There are three things that motivate my philosophical interests. First, I want my research to have practical application that isn't too difficult to motivate for people inexperienced with (analytic) philosophy. Given everyone deals with life, death, and health, bioethics seemed like a natural fit. Second, I want to provide people with tools and conceptual framings to engage in productive and meaningful anti-racist discourse and action. Some of my earliest (and most unpleasant) memories stem around race and racism. Prior to studying the philosophy of race, many of my questions related to race and racism were met with answers that were (to put it nicely) inappropriate, inadequate, or incorrect. Thus, I think it is important to give others what I was/am looking for - helpful ways to navigate experiences of race and racism. This leads to my third motivation. I want to be able to serve communities outside of academia with my work. I want my academic career to be a demonstration of goodwill toward others. In thinking through issues related to race, racism, and bioethics, my hope is that I can provide clarity on these topics and empower others. This dissertation is my attempt to tie these three motivations together

A bioethical study of privacy violations experienced by black and female subjects within the American medical system.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • The first full history of Black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book. "[Washington] has unearthed a shocking amount of information and shaped it into a riveting, carefully documented book." —New York Times From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how Blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of Blacks. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused Black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust.