New in the Hastings Center Report, May-June 2021
Racial justice and environmental toxins, gene editing, COVID, and more in the May-June 2021 issue
2021-06-17
(Press-News.org) In the Name of Racial Justice: Why Bioethics Should Care about Environmental Toxins
Keisha Ray
Facilities that emit hazardous toxins, such as toxic landfills, oil refineries, and chemical plants, are disproportionately located in predominantly Black, Latinx, and Indigenous neighborhoods. Environmental injustices like these threaten just distribution of health itself. Facilities that emit environmental toxins wrongly make people's race, ethnicity, income, and neighborhood essential to who is allowed to breathe clean air and drink clean water, and thus, who is allowed to be healthy. This can be seen in the environmental crises in Louisiana; Mississippi; Houston, Texas; and Flint, Michigan. Since bioethics purports to concern itself with the principle of justice as applied to individuals and increasingly to populations, the field ought to concern itself more with environmental injustice. Keisha Ray is an assistant professor at McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
INFORMATION:
Also in this issue:
"Ending One's Life in Advance," by Margaret Pabst Battin and Brent M. Kious
"Gene Editing: How Can You Ask 'Whether' If You Don't Know 'How'?," by Bryan Cwik
"What Has Covid Exposed in Bioethics? Four Myths," by Susan M. Wolf
For more information, contact
Susan Gilbert
Director of Communications
The Hastings Center
845-424-4040 x244
gilberts@thehastingscenter.org
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[Press-News.org] New in the Hastings Center Report, May-June 2021
Racial justice and environmental toxins, gene editing, COVID, and more in the May-June 2021 issue
