TrueSciPhi

Podcast Profile: Bioethics in the Margins

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45 episodes
2021 to 2026
Median: 49 minutes
Collection: Philosophy

Description (podcaster-provided):

Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):

This podcast brings together bioethics scholars and guests to examine health, medicine, and technology through frameworks centered on equity, structural injustice, and the perspectives of communities often left out of mainstream bioethics. Across conversations grounded in research, policy, and lived experience, the show explores how racism, capitalism, colonial histories, disability oppression, gendered inequities, and immigration enforcement shape health outcomes and the delivery of care.

A recurring focus is how bias is reproduced within clinical practice and institutions, including communication and shared decision-making in serious illness and critical care, access to oral health services, discharge planning for people experiencing homelessness, and the ethics of nonprofit healthcare missions. The podcast frequently links these clinical issues to broader systems—laws, regulation, funding priorities, and corporate influence—and considers tools for change such as medical-legal partnerships, community engagement, and institutional accountability.

Technology and science are also treated as sites where social values become embedded. Discussions address health risk prediction tools, pulse oximetry, generative AI, and the social and ethical implications of genomics, including polygenic scores and persistent myths about genetic destiny and biological race. The show also examines public health ethics and “One Health” approaches connecting humans, animals, and the environment.

Several episodes engage state power and human rights, including conditions in immigration detention (such as solitary confinement), “safe zone” policies and strategies for institutional protection of immigrants, disaster response infrastructure and the role of FEMA, policing and protest-related harms, mass incarceration and mental health, and capital punishment methods. Interwoven throughout is reflection on how bioethics as a field can move beyond individualist frameworks toward social justice obligations, political analysis, and collective efforts to remake bioethics.