In this paper, I argue that epistemic injustice in healthcare settings can contribute to patients’ rational mistrust of healthcare providers and the healthcare system, leaving these individuals vulnerable to rational belief in health-related conspiracy theories. I focus on the ways in which two kinds of epistemic injustice – testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice – can contribute to specifically women's rational mistrust of healthcare providers, as well as a rational mistrust of the mainstream healthcare system more generally. Once patients mistrust healthcare (...) providers and/or the healthcare system, it seems rational for victims of these testimonial injustices seek out information from sources other than the mainstream healthcare system. This leaves them particularly vulnerable to rational belief in potentially harmful health-related conspiracy theories, especially given the easy access we all have to health-related misinformation and conspiracy via the Internet and social media. In this sense, then, experiences of epistemic injustice can contribute to individuals’ rational belief in health-related conspiracy theories. (shrink)

If medical complicity is understood as compliance with a directive to act against the professional's best medical judgment, the question arises whether it can ever be justified. This paper will trace the contours of what would legitimate a directive to act against a professional's best medical judgment (and in possible contravention of her oath) using Joseph Raz's service conception of authority. The service conception is useful for basing the legitimacy of authoritative directives on the ability of the putative authority to (...) enable subjects to comply better with reasons that already apply to them. Hence, the service conception bases the legitimacy of practical authority on a certain kind of greater knowledge or expertise. This helps to focus the conundrum regarding complicity on the clash of expertise between the medical expert and the governing body tasked with coordinating behaviour and otherwise devising rules for the social good. The ethical dilemma presented by a hypothetically legitimate directive to act against a professional's best medical judgment also serves to highlight the moral dimension of one's duty to obey a legitimate authority. (shrink)