"A Survey of Attitudes Toward Social Justice Obligations in the Field of Bioethics" a discussion with AJOB article authors

Bioethics in the Margins

This episode of Bioethics in the Margins features a panel of bioethicists: Danielle Pacia of The Hastings Center, Sana Baban of UMass Chan Medical School, J. Wesley Boyd of Harvard Medical School, and Ryan Dougherty of Kaiser Permanente. They are the co-authors of a national survey exploring the role of social justice in their field, published in the American Journal of Bioethics: Empirical Bioethics. In this conversation, the authors discuss their key findings on what social justice obligations bioethicists feel they have, the concept of "social bioethics," and the duty of the field to address systemic injustice. We start by defining the term "social justice" and discussing how it relates to the four principles of bioethics. We spend some time unpacking the methods of the study including strengths and limitations. The main finding - that >80% of bioethicists surveyed believe that social justice should be part of their work - is contextualized by exploring how social justice can add information and objectivity to our work. The episode ends with some reflections by the authors on how we can move forward in the field with these important tools.

Work cited in this episode:

Pacia DM, Baban SS, Fletcher FE, Mithani Aziz Z, Cooper JF, Boyd JW, Dougherty RJ. A Survey of Attitudes Toward Social Justice Obligations in the Field of Bioethics. AJOB Empir Bioeth. 2025 Apr 17:1-12. doi: 10.1080/23294515.2025.2474915. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40244571/

Fletcher, F. E., Ray, K. S., Brown, V. A., & Smith, P. T. (Eds.). (2022). A critical moment in bioethics: Reckoning with anti-black racism through intergenerational dialogue. Hastings Center Report, 52(S2), S1-S68. https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.1363

Pierson, L., Gibert, S., Orszag, L., Sullivan, H. K., Fei, R. Y., Persad, G., & Largent, E. A. (2024). Bioethicists today: Results of the views in bioethics survey. The American Journal of Bioethics, 24(5), 4-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2024.2323869

Dougherty RJ, Fins JJ. Toward a Social Bioethics Through Interpretivism: A Framework for Healthcare Ethics. Camb Q Healthc Ethics. 2024 Jan;33(1):6-16. doi: 10.1017/S0963180123000452. Epub 2023 Aug 25. PMID: 37622652. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37622652/