In this episode, we speak with Dr. Richard Leiter, senior palliative care physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. We discuss the state of end-of-life care in the US today, why patients often receive care that doesn’t align with their values, whether so…

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Danielle Allen, professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy at Harvard and Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, about the extent to which we should involve laypeople in decisions about health and science policy through democratic, participatory processes. (00:00) Our introduction (0…

In this episode, we speak with Marc Lipsitch, epidemiologist and professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, about what lessons we should take from the COVID-19 pandemic, what role research should play in mitigating and preventing future pandemics, and how we should regula…

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Sally Haslanger, Ford Professor of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies at MIT, about what norms are, how we can know when they need to be changed, and how we should change them. (00:00) Our introduction (5:12) Interview begins (16:07) What grounds social norms (18:56) How we can know a moral norm is problema…

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby, a philosopher and bioethicist at Baylor College of Medicine, about why she thinks clinicians are often permitted, and even required, to use insights from behavioral economics and decision psychology to shape patients’ medical decisions. (00:00) Our introduction (05:50) Interview begins (…

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Jeff Sebo, a philosopher and bioethicist at New York University, about what it would mean to take seriously the possibility that non-human animals (including insects) and future AI systems might matter morally. (00:00) Our introduction (05:56) Interview begins (07:21) The moral circle vs. the legal and political c…

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Christopher Robichaud, Director of Pedagogical Innovation at Harvard’s Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics, about whether and how we can teach scientists, doctors, and other professionals to be more ethical, what the goals of ethics education ought to be, and how we can know we’re achieving them. (00:00) Our i…

In this episode, we speak with Professor Holly Fernandez Lynch, a lawyer and bioethicist in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and founder and co-chair of AEREO, an organization that aims to understand and measure the benefits and drawbacks of the IRB system. With Holly, we discuss what we currently…

Content warning: This episode contains discussions of suicide, suicidal ideation, and symptoms of mental illness. If you or someone you know or love is struggling, please seek help. You can call or text 988 to reach the suicide and crisis lifeline. In this episode, we interview Dr. Marie Nicolini, a psychiatrist and bioethicist who testified to the…

In this episode, we interview Dr. Govind Persad, an expert on resource allocation whose work influenced COVID-19 allocation policies, about how we should allocate scarce medical resources, what stood in the way of optimal allocation during the covid pandemic, and how we can improve resource allocation within the US healthcare system. (00:00) Our In…

In this episode, we interview Dr. Robert Steel about how we should assess the risks and benefits of research, what justifies research oversight, and whether there should be upper limits on the amount of risk research participants are exposed to. (00:00) Our introduction (05:06) Start of interview; IRB background (13:34) The notion of minimal risk (…

Welcome to Bio(un)ethical, the podcast where we question existing norms in medicine, science, and public health. In this episode, we (Leah Pierson and Sophie Gibert) introduce the podcast and talk about why we started it and what we hope to achieve. If you want to support us, the best way is to subscribe, rate, and review our show wherever you get …