MAiD, (Canadian) Bioethicists, and the Banality of Evil

Two or three generations from now, philosophers will look back in horror and shame at the role that Canadian bioethicists and philosophers played in the normalization of medically assisted suicide (a.k.a. MAiD) in Canada. In the seventh-anniversary installment of Dialogues on Disability that I posted last month, Isaac Jiang, with whom I composed the installment, […]

Bioethics (and) MAID in Canada

Bioethicists in Canada (and elsewhere) have played a significant role in the formulation and implementation of legislation that has steadily expanded the scope of what counts as acceptable with respect to medically-assisted death, that is, which medically-assisted deaths should be regarded as acceptable to the Canadian public, whose deaths, and why. Some of these (and […]

Is “The Right to Die” Racialized Biopolitics?

[This post originally appeared at the Discrimination and Disadvantage blog which is now defunct In one respect, the title of the post was redundant: biopolitics are always racialized.] _________________________________________________ My post earlier in the week drew attention to the imbrication of the sub-field of bioethics in the workings of biopower and neoliberal biopolitics. I noted how biopolitics […]

The Biopolitics of Bioethics

[This post originally appeared at the Discrimination and Disadvantage blog which is now defunct.] In a chapter of my forthcoming book, I argue that (most of the) claims advanced in the sub-field of mainstream bioethics and even feminist bioethics rely upon an outdated conception of power that manifests in ideas about “choice,” “informed consent,” and […]