{"id":2950,"date":"2026-03-24T15:30:59","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T15:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/24\/why-we-need-black-bioethics\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T15:30:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T15:30:59","slug":"why-we-need-black-bioethics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/24\/why-we-need-black-bioethics\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we need Black bioethics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tHealth\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\tWhy we need Black bioethics\t<\/h1>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n

A doctor drawing blood from a patient as part of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.<\/p>\n

Public Domain\/National Archives<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n
\n
\n

\n\t\tClea Simon\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHarvard Correspondent\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/address>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\t\t

\t\t
\n\t\t\t5 min read\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n

\n\t\t\tPanel points to historical examples, including Tuskegee experiment, pandemic, and life expectancy inequities\t\t<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n
\n

There is a need for a Black bioethics, argued a recent panel sponsored by Harvard Medical School and Tuskegee University. One need look no farther than inequities in COVID-19 diagnoses and treatment during the pandemic for evidence, but another, devastating historical example is the 40-year-long Tuskegee experiment.<\/p>\n

Moderator Rebecca Brendel, director of the HMS Center for Bioethics, gave a quick recap of the experiment, in which several hundred Black sharecroppers were enrolled in a U.S. Public Health Service study.<\/p>\n

The 399 participants, all suffering from syphilis, were told they had \u201cbad blood\u201d so researchers could observe the progress of the untreated deadly disease in human subjects. The study ran from 1932 to 1972.<\/p>\n

In 1978, a national committee of physicians, lawyers, and scientists issued The Belmont Report, which outlined ethical guidelines. (An official apology, from President Bill Clinton, finally came in 1997.)<\/p>\n

\n

Adie Fein\/Harvard Chan School<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But nearly 40 years after The Belmont Report, discrimination in healthcare remains a stark reality. Black mortality rates are still significantly higher than those of white people in the U.S., said panelist David Augustin Hodge, interim director, lead ethicist, and research professor at the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Healthcare at Tuskegee.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlack people die at a faster rate. Life expectancy is lower,\u201d said Hodge. Minority children \u201care 3.5 times more likely to die in childhood\u201d than white. These discrepancies translate to \u201cabout 80 million years of life that have been lost between 1999 and 2020,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Such deaths are often attributed to causes unrelated to race. For example, the higher mortality rate of Black people with COVID is blamed on co-morbidities. But the co-morbidities that make Black people more vulnerable, such as diabetes, are themselves a result of a healthcare system that has failed the Black community.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we do not give attention to Black lives and brown lives and the lives of the vulnerable, we will see these things happen,\u201d said panelist T.S. Harvey, associate professor of medical and linguistic anthropology and global health at Vanderbilt University.<\/p>\n

The Belmont Report, as Harvey pointed out is \u201cstrictly limited,\u201d in that it discusses only research with human subjects.<\/p>\n

Considering these strictures, \u201cit has been applied too broadly\u201d as an answer to discrimination, he said. Instead, bioethicists need to look to liberation theology as a model of \u201cinclusiveness rather than exclusiveness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a Black bioethicist. I\u2019m just as interested in our Native American population. I\u2019m just as interested in Alaskan or Asian Pacific populations. I\u2019m just as interested in my Hispanic brothers down on the border, the Mexican brothers and sisters, or the Cuban brothers and sisters. In those in the Appalachian Mountains, those who are poor,\u201d Harvey said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause quite frankly, when we\u2019re talking about ethics and when we\u2019re talking about principles, we are talking about the least of us,\u201d as liberation theology teaches, he said.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u201cIf we do not understand or start to work with the power of implicit bias in technology, we will continue to go down the road of excising those communities that need to be involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Augustin Hodge<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

Complicating the problem of healthcare discrepancies is the rising use of AI in both medical and sociological research, both noted. Because AI draws from published material, it is inherently backward-looking \u2014 and replicates the biased research of the past, such as studies that only included white people or only men.<\/p>\n

\u201cTechnology for all of its capabilities, whether or not we\u2019re talking about artificial intelligence, large language models, or really sophisticated prosthetics, is not neutral,\u201d said Harvey. \u201cIt replicates existing structures, existing notions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we do not understand or start to work with the power of implicit bias in technology, we will continue to go down the road of excising those communities that need to be involved,\u201d said Hodge.<\/p>\n

Exclusion also occurs \u201cnot by racism, but by comfort zones,\u201d Hodge continued, noting that researchers tend to think in terms of the communities to which they belong. \u201cWhen we\u2019re talking about clinical trials, we [should be] talking about making the invisible visible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

To counter this ingrained racism and classism, said Harvey, we must \u201cthink about health disparities and who are the populations that are impacted now, and then reimagine those technologies and reimagine those interventions by understanding those challenges. But to do that, we have to move beyond utilitarian ethics to what Dr. Hodge talks about as fundamentally relational.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can use many, many different philosophical frames to think this through, but we need to recognize that technology is there as an aid and can be used in many, many ways, but also understand the kinds of disparities that some of these technologies reproduce,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

One model may be found in the gaming community, where \u201cthe technology is in the hands of the gamers,\u201d he said. In other words, it is driven by the users, which in healthcare would mean the patients or clients.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, \u201cI continue to push,\u201d said Hodge, even as he identified a source of hope: \u201cYoung people are thinking about this kind of work: public health ethics, public health and bioethics, neuroethics, etc. It is important to engage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we hope to do is to build beyond,\u201d concluded Harvey. \u201cReimagine the possibilities to think about the complexity of the problems as human problems that have human solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBioethics and Black History: The Legacy of the Tuskegee Report\u201d was organized by the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, the\u00a0<\/em>National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care<\/em><\/a>\u00a0at Tuskegee University, and the HMS\u00a0<\/em>Office for Culture and Community Engagement<\/em><\/a> as part of the series \u201cReflecting on the History of Healthcare,\u201d available on the HMS Center for Bioethics <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a> community<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Health Why we need Black bioethics A doctor drawing blood from a patient as part of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Public Domain\/National Archives Clea Simon Harvard Correspondent March 13, 2026 5 min read Panel points to historical examples, including Tuskegee experiment, pandemic, and life expectancy inequities There is a need for a Black bioethics, argued …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2951,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":45,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-staying-healthy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}