An Update: Antiracist Bioethics

 Hello world, 

A lot has changed since the last post on here over five years ago. On a personal note, I aged out of my own blog, went to law school, got married, and changed my name. However, I'm still the same in some ways as when I started Bioethx Under 25, primarily in that, I am still invested in encouraging young people such as students and/or amateur philosophers of any age to engage in bioethics as a discipline through informal discussions, writing, and reading. I started this blog as a space for people who were not necessarily experienced enough to publish academic writing, either by age, study, or profession. The goal was to publish on the blog writing that was researched and well thought-out that might at times push the boundaries of what would be considered formal, academic bioethics. 

I believed in this project because I believed (and still do) that while bioethics is an academic discipline, it is also about our everyday lives and rigorous engagement with bioethical topics and literature can be for everyone. I stopped running the blog due to a slow-down in submissions and interest generally from my peer circle and changing priorities as I myself left the formal discipline and could no longer promote or edit it. However, I have happily left it up as it was, somewhat frozen in time both because I genuinely think the pieces by many writers are valuable and this blog serves as a recording of their effort and ideas. If you yourself are interested in bioethics or writing about it, please do look through these posts and see if something interests or inspires you. 

I decided to write this update because yesterday I launched a new project, an Instagram account called Antiracist Bioethics, which creates a space for engagement and dissemination of information on bioethics concepts through the lens of antiracism. Since Bioethx Under 25 was up and running, the Black Lives Matter Movement, Me Too Movement, LGBTQI Rights and fights for equity and solidarity against racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, and inequality have grown in volume and especially through the use of social media. While the racially disproportionate impact of harm from failures in medicine, healthcare, research, incarceration, policing, and climate change are not new at all, bioethics as a discipline has not acknowledged and reckoned with these realities enough. 

Antiracist Bioethics will include and amplify scholars and students already doing antiracism work in bioethics, elevate bioethicists of color, and promote all bioethics topics and research that evaluate and comprehend impact on racial minorities, particularly Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic or Latinx communities. The sheer diversity of these experiences, especially when considered intersectionally with gender, gender identity, sex, and sexual orientation, demonstrate the great wealth of material available to explore as researchers, amateur bioethicists, and just as people living on this planet in this time.

Ultimately, bioethics as an applied ethical discipline aims to evaluate our ways of living, being healthy, conceptions of bodies and experience, and relationship to the world around us. Without interrogating colonial, imperialistic, and white supremist underpinnings of the institutions and concepts that are being analyzed there will always be parts of the picture missing. If any of this interests you, please follow me on Instagram @antiracistbioethics and continue the conversation. Thank you for reading. 

Sincerely,

Mohini P.B. Rarrick