Revising the Bioethics Story: Memory and Story in Precarious Times

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 65 (4):521-528 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The foundation story of bioethics is, as Susan Reverby (2009) argues, one of a trinity of horror stories culminating in what we commonly call the "Tuskegee Syphilis Study." The foundation story emphasizes that medical researchers violated participant autonomy by deceiving them about their medical conditions, the goals of the study, and the treatments they would receive, and by failing to consider the health and best interests of the research participant. While this story reflects some key elements of the Tuskegee study, it is only a selection of all the possible facts that, as a consequence, deflects attention from equally salient and problematic elements of the Public Health Service's unethical study and its context. Those elements not included in the bioethics foundation story represent the types of racial and social inequities that COVID-19 and other contemporary events have thrown into stark relief. If bioethics plans to emphasize translational work around public policy and public engagement understood broadly, then it will need to revise and expand the story it tells about itself and its founding.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Story and Story-World.Amos N. Wilder - 1983 - Interpretation 37 (4):353-364.
Instead of revising half the story, why not rewrite the whole thing?Holly A. Taylor - 2007 - American Journal of Bioethics 7 (3):19 – 21.
Story Identity and Story Type.Aaron Smuts - 2009 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67 (1):5-14.
The Eros of Memory.Rafael Argullol - 2004 - Diogenes 51 (1):49-53.
The Story of Memory, and the Memory of Story.L. Weiskrantz - 2000 - In Endel Tulving (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Memory. Oxford University Press.
Phaedrus and Folklore: an Old Problem Restated.T. C. W. Stinton - 1979 - Classical Quarterly 29 (02):432-.

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-12-01

Downloads
3 (#1,513,612)

6 months
1 (#1,027,696)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references