Bioethics, migrations and racism: Striving for a bioethics in action

Bioethics emerged in the middle of the 20th century mostly as a reaction to racist crimes such as the atrocities of Nazi medical experimentation in World War II or the outrageous Tuskegee Syphilis study in the US. Since that time, bioethics has expanded its domain and strengthened its toolbox. This contributed to the protection of patients’ rights, dignity, and autonomy and enhanced their awareness of the medical treatments they undergo. However, in less than a century, discrimination and racism in healthcare, which were originally the foundation of bioethics, have been overshadowed by the tendency of bioethics scholars toward the “cutting-edge” and the “technology-driven”, which has relegated the cultural, social and economic factors associated with health and healthcare to the background. In this chapter, I sketch out the steps bioethics can take to tackle the inequalities and discrimination in healthcare suffered by migrants in destination societies, at the heart of which lie xenophobic and racist attitudes, practices, and policies. I conclude by highlighting the fact that caring for migrants’ health must be regarded as an “ethical imperative”, which can also pave the way for a “bioethics in action”.