Bioethical Responsibilities in 21st Century Crises

Bioethical Responsibilities in 21st Century Crises emerged out of a special edited volume of the journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine on the "Translational Work of Bioethics" in 2022 (header image is a series of Monet haystacks translated across time and season, that are the image of the special issue cover).

Bioethical Responsibilities in 21st Century Crises (2025)

The forthcoming collection with Bloomsbury Press as part of its Revolutionary Bioethics Series, Bioethical Responsibilities in Twenty-First Century Crises, edited by Elizabeth Lanphier and Larry R. Churchill, addresses the need for new bioethical methods, attention to overlooked difference, responding to climate change, and charting new identities for and within bioethics. Taken as a whole, this book shows how bioethics needs to update its tools and focus to realize its core commitment to justice in the twenty-first century. The field of bioethics requires better responses to structural inequities and intersectional oppression impacting individual medical care, health policy, or research priorities and participation. But it also needs to address the broader impact social and political choices have on health and well-being.

“Can bioethics remain true to its justice roots, while at the same time transforming its toolkits, language, and practices to address the problems of a socially changing world? In Bioethical Responsibilities in Twenty-First Century Crises, Lanphier and Churchill bring together top-tier bioethicists to ask the hard but necessary questions about the future of bioethics. They force us to ask ourselves what bioethicists must do to meet the problems of the 21st century, and if we are willing to do things a little differently to help the general public navigate ethical challenges. Any bioethicist questioning their role in this changing social, cultural, and political climate will find community among the authors in this book.” Keisha Ray, author of Black Health: The Social, Political, and Cultural Determinants of Black People’s Health (2023)

Translational Work of Bioethics

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine Volume 65, Number 4, Autumn 2022

"This translational work of bioethics to connect scholarly innovation back to overt practical innovation is often peripheral to academic bioethics. It is not the work the academy typically recognizes in its credit system. Yet this translational work is becoming a critical, central duty of bioethics... while the kinds of work the academy most valorizes may be the least important at this time. In particular, the need for translational initiatives is increasingly evident as pandemics linger into a new normal, the long history and ongoing impacts of racism become even more evident at institutional levels, and the devastating health implications of global warming emerge." - Lanphier and Churchill, editors' introduction

The collection features authors within bioethics challenging themselves and the field to think critically about how and where to position bioethics work that is impactful for the issues of social, climate, and health justice ahead. It includes 19 essays across a range of topics.

Bioethics with Bigger Impact

In the spring of 2023, we organized a series of online panels, generously hosted by the Hastings Center and the Center for Public Engagement with Science, bringing together authors in the Translational Work of Bioethics symposium and others, to talk about intersecting themes across their work to a broad and public audience. The recordings remain available to watch at the Center for Public Engagement with Science YouTube page.

"Communicating Ethical Challenges in Crises" with Travis Rieder, Tia Powell, and Keisha Ray

"Unpacking Neglected Social Factors to Ensure Impact" with Georgina Campelia, Holly Vo, Gail Henderson, and Jen James

"Confronting Climate Change in the Perfect Moral Storm" with Stephen Gardiner, Nancy Tuana, and Romy Opperman

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