Curious Bioethics: April 24-30, 2023
Family policing, Anti-vax nonsense, Fat Talk, Trans bioethics
Hey there, Curious Human!
In today’s curated collection, you’ll find:
Bioethics in the News: family policing, Long covid research, Mississippi anti-vax law, RKF’s anti-vax presidential run
What I’m Reading: Fat Talk by Virginia Sole-Smith
Educational Opportunities: Trans Bioethics in a Moral Panic
Bioethics in the News
Family Policing: Black parents in Texas finally get their baby back
After the home birth of their daughter Mia, Rodney and Temecia Jackson lost custody of their baby girl after they chose to have their midwife treat her jaundice, in opposition to physicians. She was born on March 21, and not returned to her parents’ custody until April 20.
“We’ve been treated like criminals,” Rodney Jackson said during the news conference. “This is a nightmare that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”
Mia’s physician wrote to CPS that the Jacksons “are very loving” and “their distrust for medical care and guidance has led them to make a decision for the baby to refuse a simple treatment that can prevent brain damage.”
The policing of Black families is a major issue in the U.S., where parents are presumed negligent far too often. As mandated reporters, healthcare providers often turn families over to child protective services (CPS), rather than building trusting relationships to overcome distrust. This is more complicated when delays in treatment may risk irreversible injury to the baby.
This case shows the intersection of racism, white-centered medical care, understandable parental mis- and distrust of physicians, and the popularity of “natural” treatments.
Long Covid Clinical Trials
Covid has left (and will continue to leave) a new population of people with disabilities. On Tuesday, the FDA hosted a listening session with long covid patients to hear about their symptoms and their hopes for new research into the condition. Patients brought up numerous critical barriers to access to research participation - such as in-person requirements, costs, and medication side effects.
Mississippi Anti-Vax Win
Anti-vaccine activists in Mississippi succeeded in wedging religious exemptions back into the state’s childhood vaccine requirements.
In their STAT First Opinions law professor Dorit Reiss and ethicist Art Caplan write:
“In 1979, Mississippi’s Supreme Court struck down the religious exemption to its school vaccination requirement. Since then, Mississippi’s only exemption has been for medical reasons. As a result, traditionally last-place Mississippi led the nation in a key health care metric: childhood vaccination rates for kids entering kindergarten. This helped Mississippi keep its rate of preventable diseases low.
But now, a judge’s preliminary injunction requiring the state to provide a religious exemption puts Mississippi’s achievement at risk. Worse, the judge did so in spite of strong legal reasons to go the other way.”
RFK Jr.’s Antivax Presidential Run
Notorious anti-vax advocate Robert F. Kennedy announced his run for the presidency. His speech focused intensely on the coronavirus pandemic and government response.
"A lot of people say President Trump gets blamed for a lot of things that he didn't do. And he gets blamed for some things that he did do. But the worst thing that he did to this country, to our civil rights, to our economy, to the middle class in this country is lockdowns," Kennedy said.
In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate identified 12 digital accounts, including RFK Jr’s, as the “Disinformation Dozen” - fueling the vast majority of online misinformation and disinformation about vaccination.
Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon has apparently encouraged RFK Jr. to run. Between DeSantis and RFK, I expect new will see the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement and anti-public health messages at the forefront of the 2024 presidential campaign. Of note, much of Kennedy’s family has disavowed his anti-vax messages.
What I’m Reading This Week
Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture
I am pumped that my copy of
's Fat Talk arrived this week. My first conscious memory of body shame was around age 9, when my hot pink, tiger print bikini revealed my rounded belly. I grew up in the 80s and 90s eating non-fat everything, in a supersize fast food era, in a culture that was constantly dieting and policing everyone's body - a mom constantly on some sort of diet, an aunt taking fen-phen, my best friend counting how many carbs were in Skittles, and all of us immersed in fat jokes. To be fat was a moral failing. How could you succeed at anything if you couldn't succeed at keeping the boundaries of your body where everyone else seemed to think they were supposed to be?I’ve thought a lot about fat shaming, especially as I’ve raised my own kids. I’ve been eager to avoid inadvertently pushing my kids into the unhealthy pattern of cyclic dieting. So Fat Talk comes at a great time for parents - especially us physician-parents who have been steeped in hyper-fat phobic medical training in addition to the regular fat phobia soup we all live in. (I plan to write more on this in another post)
You can read more from Sole-Smith at Burnt Toast:
Educational Opportunities
Trans Bioethics in a Moral Panic
Thursday, May 18, 2023
10 AM PT, 11 AM MT, Noon CT, 1 PM ET
Speaker: Florence Ashley, SJD LLM (Florence is a transfeminine jurist, bioethicist, public speaker, and activist.)
Host: American Society of Bioethics and Humanities
Register here.
The practice of trans bioethics has been radically altered in recent years by widespread attempts to curtail and even criminalize access to gender-affirming medical care. In this presentation, Florence Ashley will explore how the current sociopolitical landscape impacts bioethicists’ engagement with trans communities. Attendees will learn about the political and human rights dimensions of gender-affirming care and deepen their understanding of how to counter misinformation about transgender health.
(Recordings of the first three ASBH webinars in the series are available here.)
That’s it!
As always, thanks for being curious!
Hit reply and let me know what ethics issues you are most curious about this week—I’d love to hear from you!
See you next week!
Be Well & Be Curious,
Alyssa
