Bioethics and racism: an introduction

Bioethics emerged in the middle of the 20th century, mostly as a reaction to racist crimes perpetrated under the auspices of healthcare, such as the atrocities of Nazi medical experimentations or the outrageous Tuskegee Syphilis study conducted in the US from 1932 to 1972. Since then, the field of bioethics has grown notably, expanded its domain and strengthened its toolbox, thus contributing to the enhancement of patients’ rights, dignity, and autonomy and their awareness of the medical treatments they undergo. Indeed, bioethics today is a flourishing discipline and currently serves as a “bridge to the future” as in the pioneering view of Van Rensselaer Potter, who understood the need for a new “wisdom” – and thus for a new discipline – located at the intersection between biological knowledge and human values. The development of bioethics today is inextricably linked to the magnitude and the relevance of current technological advancements in medicine and related fields. These include recent discoveries in the field of genetics and its subfields as well as new technology-driven medical treatments, which have amplified conflicts of values and interests and made it increasingly complex to find an adequate balance among them. The need to address these challenges strengthens the value of the knowledge and the tools offered by bioethics to both healthcare professionals and patients.