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Recent calls to address racism in bioethics reflect a sense of urgency to mitigate the lethal effects of a lack of action. While the field was catalyzed largely in response to pivotal events deeply rooted in racism and other structures of oppression embedded in research and health care, it has failed to center racial justice in its scholarship, pedagogy, advocacy, and practice, and neglected to integrate anti-racism as a central consideration. Academic bioethics programs play a key role in determining the field's norms and practices, including methodologies, funding priorities, and professional networks that bear on equity, inclusion, and epistemic justice. This article describes recommendations from the Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI) Task Force commissioned by the Association of Bioethics Program Directors to prioritize and strengthen anti-racist practices in bioethics programmatic endeavors and to evaluate and develop specific goals to advance REDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author argues that an authentic racial reckoning in the U.S. and in its bioethics cannot be done without accounting for whiteness in 2021. Topics discussed include the latter's referral to the established ideology that advantages white-identified persons and groups and disadvantages others, and its related hierarchical allocation of resources and opportunities. Also noted is the need for bioethics to draw on racial equity and antiracism material to become a racially equitable field.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy prohibits blood donation from men who have had sex with men (MSM) even one time since 1977. Growing moral criticism claims that this policy is discriminatory, a claim rejected by the FDA. An overview of U.S. blood donation, recent donor deferral policy, and the conventional ethical debate introduce the need for a different approach to analyzing discrimination claims. I draw on an institutional understanding of injustice to discern and describe five features of the MSM policy and its FDA context that contribute to its discriminatory effect. I note significant similarities in the 1980s policy of deferring Haitians, suggesting an historical pattern of discrimination in FDA deferral policy. Finally, I point to changes needed to move toward a nondiscriminatory deferral policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author responds to comments about her article "Blood donation, deferral, and discrimination: FDA donor deferral policy for men who have sex with men." She mentions there is no U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) blood donor policy for heterosexuals as risk groups. She suggests that FDA policy is based on more than medical evidence.