Canadian Journal of Bioethics / Revue canadienne de bioéthique

The Power of Silence

Florence Ashley — 2024-03-18

In conversation with Hortense Gallois’ recent essay on the importance of bioethicists participating in public discourse, I suggest that speaking up is as fraught as it is important. Focusing on the anti-trans movement’s misuse of expertise, I highlight the fine line between correcting misinformation and inadvertently causing harm through ill-timed speech. Drawing on the work of Eva Feder Kittay, I suggest that knowing when to speak up and when to stay silent starts with understanding the communities we speak about and the consequences that our words can have on them.

Towards an Alliance Between Biologists and Ethicists: Paving the Way for Tomorrow

Antoine Boudreau LeBlanc — 2024-03-18

The COVID-19 pandemic, climate migration, and biodiversity loss are examples of contemporary crises which, as Van Rensselaer Potter suggests, would benefit from a rapprochement between Bio and Ethics in order to mitigate the damage. Future bioethicists will have to continue this Potterian quest by opening up the field of bioethics to new interdisciplinary collaboration and themes of study, going beyond biomedical technologies and the life sciences, to include business, corporations, finance, the market and human consumption, production and demography, all of which have significant influences on the local allocation of care and on the global future of ecosystems.

Disabling Bioethics Futures

C Dalrymple-Fraser — 2024-03-18

Relationships between disability and bioethics are often fraught, particularly when we are concerned with imagining possible futures. The futures imagined for disabled people are often futures without disabled people, utopias where disability has been cured, defeated, or overcome. How might we build better disability futures in a discipline so often committed to futures without disability? Here, I call for more creative inquiries into disability through research, representation, education, and engagement with disabled expertise.

Professionalization of Clinical Bioethics: This is the Way

Daniel Wyzynski — 2024-03-18

Professionalization across the field of bioethics is valuable and should be invested in by future generations of ethicists. To support this, standardization should expand beyond clinical ethics, ensuring considerations for organizational and research ethics, and encouraging membership that includes those with diverse backgrounds of education, lived experiences, and employment.

A Letter to the Current and Future Generation of Bioethicists: Learn to Navigate Between Theory and Practice

Marie-Josée Drolet — 2024-03-18

This letter is an unpretentious reflection on a decade of research in applied ethics and bioethics. Drawing on the experiential knowledge of the author, who has a background in occupational therapy and philosophy, this letter presents some of what has been learned over the years, which may help the current and future generation of bioethicists to navigate between theory and practice, and in so doing, value those confronted with ethical issues, demonstrate epistemic humility, while mobilizing ideas and theories capable of shedding light on the ethical dimensions of various experiences and practices.