Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Incarceration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Incarceration. Show all posts

Saturday, March 18, 2023

Black Bioethics in the Age of Black Lives Matter

Ray, K., Fletcher, F.E., Martschenko, D.O. et al. 
J Med Humanit (2023).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-023-09783-4

Here are two excerpts:

Lessons Black Bioethics can take from BLM

BLM showed that telling Black people’s stories or giving them a space to tell their own stories is viewed as an inherently political act simply because Black people’s existence is viewed as political. At the same time, it taught us that we absolutely must take on this task because, if we do not tell our stories, other people will tell them for us and use our stories to deny us our rightful moral status and all the rights it entitles us.

BLM let Black people’s stories fuel its social justice initiatives. It used stories to put Black people at the forefront of protests and social inclusion efforts to show the extent to which Black people had been excluded from our collective social consciousness. Stories allowed us to see the total impact of anti-Black racism and the ways it infiltrates all parts of Black life. And for those who were far removed from the experience of being Black, BLM used stories to make us care about racial injustice and be so moved that we were unable to turn our backs on Black people’s suffering. In this way, stories are an act of rebellion, a way to force people to reckon with BLM’s demands that Black people ought to be treated like the full and complex human beings we are.

Black Bioethics is also a rebellion. It is a rebellion against the status quo in bioethics—a rebellion against Black people’s lives being an afterthought, particularly in issues of justice. Stories aid in this rebellion. Just as stories helped BLM show the full range of Black people’s humanity and the ways that individuals and institutions deny Black people that humanity, stories help Black Bioethics demonstrate just how our institutions contribute to Black people’s poor health and prevent them from living full lives. In Black Bioethics, stories can create the same emotional stirring that they did for BLM supporters since they share many of the same challenges and goals. And just as it would be imprudent to underestimate the role of stories in social justice, it would be imprudent of us to underestimate what stories can do for our sense of health justice for Black people.

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Toward an intersectional bioethics

Bioethics is well-positioned to foster antiracism in scholarship, training, and advocacy (Danis et al. 2016). Although the field focuses on ethical issues in biomedical research and clinical care specifically, Danis et al. (2016) point out that many ethical dilemmas that impact health and well-being lie outside of healthcare settings. For instance, there are significant ethical dilemmas posed by the social determinants of health and complex disease. Social factors such as poverty, unequal access to healthcare, lack of education, stigma, and racism are underlying and contributing factors to health inequalities. These inequalities, in turn, generate the ethical dilemmas that bioethics grapples with (Danis et al. 2016). If the field genuinely values the just conduct of biomedical research and the just provision of clinical care, then it will need to draw upon intersectionality to understand and effectively analyze the many interlocking complexities in our world and in human experiences. Social activist movements like BLM and their use of intersectionality offer several lessons to those in the field working to secure justice in biomedicine, clinical care, and society.

First, as an analytic tool, intersectionality recognizes and understands that different social forces conjoin to produce and maintain privilege and marginalization. Therefore, intersectionality clarifies instances in which real lives and experiences are being erased. Bioethics cannot afford to “neglect entire ways of being in the world,” though it has and continues to do so (Wallace 2022, S79). Social activist movements like BLM are drawing attention to ways of being that are unjust yet largely ignored by mainstream hegemonic interests. For instance, BLM directly acknowledges within its movement “those who have been marginalized within [other] Black liberation movements” (Black Lives Matter n.d.). Using intersectionality, BLM heightens awareness of the ways in which Black queer and trans individuals, undocumented individuals, and people with disabilities have different experiences with White supremacy and advance colonialism. In doing so, it centers rather than erases real lives and experiences. Learning from this movement, bioethical scholarship grounded in the principle of justice will need to find ways to center the experiences of Black-identifying individuals without treating the Black community as a homogenous entity.

Friday, March 13, 2020

When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested

Lizzie Presser
Propublica.org
Originally posted 16 Oct 19

Here is an excerpt:

Across the country, thousands of people are jailed each year for failing to appear in court for unpaid bills, in arrangements set up much like this one. The practice spread in the wake of the recession as collectors found judges willing to use their broad powers of contempt to wield the threat of arrest. Judges have issued warrants for people who owe money to landlords and payday lenders, who never paid off furniture, or day care fees, or federal student loans. Some debtors who have been arrested owed as little as $28.

More than half of the debt in collections stems from medical care, which, unlike most other debt, is often taken on without a choice or an understanding of the costs. Since the Affordable Care Act of 2010, prices for medical services have ballooned; insurers have nearly tripled deductibles — the amount a person pays before their coverage kicks in — and raised premiums and copays, as well. As a result, tens of millions of people without adequate coverage are expected to pay larger portions of their rising bills.

The sickest patients are often the most indebted, and they’re not exempt from arrest. In Indiana, a cancer patient was hauled away from home in her pajamas in front of her three children; too weak to climb the stairs to the women’s area of the jail, she spent the night in a men’s mental health unit where an inmate smeared feces on the wall. In Utah, a man who had ignored orders to appear over an unpaid ambulance bill told friends he would rather die than go to jail; the day he was arrested, he snuck poison into the cell and ended his life.

The info is here.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Neuroscientist pleads guilty in court to fraud, gets two-year suspended sentence

Retraction Watch
Originally published March 31, 2016

Here is an except:

It’s not often that we see stories of researchers getting sentenced by courts for fraud (even though more scientists are bringing misconduct disputes to the courthouse). Last year, a researcher who confessed to spiking blood samples to boost the findings of an HIV vaccine experiment was sentenced to almost five years in prison, and ordered to pay back millions in grant funding; only a handful of other scientists — such as Eric Poehlman and Scott Reuben — have also been sentenced to jail time for their deeds.

The article is here.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Perspectives on Juvenile Detention and Solitary Confinement

By Antonia Cartwright
Juvenile Justice Information Exchange
Originally posted August 27, 2014

Juvenile solitary confinement is a poignant indictment of our dependence on incarceration. The practice is pervasive in the United States, despite the fact that it damages our youth and, by causing higher recidivism, harms our society. Many other countries avoid or prohibit juvenile solitary confinement, viewing it as torture.

Disguised under a barrage of euphemisms, including segregation and secure housing, juvenile solitary confinement is pervasive in the United States, but lacks legal definition and practice guidelines. Recent legislation in California sought to restrict juvenile isolation to addressing urgent risks only. Unfortunately this has stalled, but advocates must continue to address the issue. Many states segregate juveniles for protection or punishment, for weeks or even months at a time.

The entire Op-Ed piece is here.