The Disability Bioethics Reader

The Disability Bioethics Reader is the first introduction to the field of bioethics presented through the lens of critical disability studies and the philosophy of disability. Introductory and advanced textbooks in bioethics focus almost entirely on issues that disproportionately affect disabled people and that centrally deal with becoming or being disabled. However, such textbooks typically omit critical philosophical reflection on disability. Directly addressing this omission, this volume includes36 chapters, most appearing here for the first time, that cover key areas pertaining to disability bioethics, such as: state-of-the-field analyses of modern medicine, bioethics, and disability theory health, disease, and the philosophy of medicine issues at the edge- and end-of-life, including physician-aid-in-dying, brain death, and minimally conscious states enhancement and biomedical technology invisible disabilities, chronic pain, and chronic illness implicit bias and epistemic injustice in health care disability, quality of life, and well-being race, disability, and healthcare justice connections between disability theory and aging, trans, and fat studies prenatal testing, abortion, and reproductive justice. The Disability Bioethics Reader, unlike traditional bioethics textbooks, also engages with decades of empirical and theoretical scholarship in disability studies—scholarship that spans the social sciences and humanities—and gives serious consideration to the history of disability activism.

Part I: History, Medicine, and Disability 1. A Short History of Modern Medicine and DisabilityMichael Rembis 2. Eugenics, Disability, and BioethicsRobert Wilson 3. Theories of DisabilityJoel Michael Reynolds Part II: Bioethics: Past & Present 4. A Critical History of BioethicsJohn Evans 5. Methods of BioethicsAlison Reiheld 6. Disability Bioethics: From Theory to PracticeRosemarie Garland-Thomson Part III: Philosophy of Medicine & Phenomenology 7. Disability and the Definition of HealthSean Aas 8. The Lived Experiences of Illness and DisabilityHavi Carel Part IV: Prenatal Testing and Abortion 9. Abortion, Disability Rights, and Reproductive JusticeElizabeth Dietz 10. A Fatal Attraction to Normalizing: Treating Disabilities as Deviations from “Species-Typical” FunctioningAnita Silvers11. Being Disabled and Contemplating Disabled ChildrenJackie Leach Scully 12. The Wrongs of Wrongful Birth: Disability, Race, and Reproductive JusticeDesiree Valentine Part V: Disability, The Life Course, and Well-Being 13. Disability, Ideology, and Quality of Life: A Bias in Biomedical EthicsRon Amundson 14. The Challenge of Chronic PainEmma Sheppard 15. Chronic Illness and Well-BeingLydia Nunez Landry16. Disability and Aging Studies: Obstacles and OpportunitiesErin Lamb Part VI: Issues at the Edge & End of Life 17. Death, Pandemic, and Intersectionality: What the Failures in an End-of-Life Case Can Teach About Structural Justice and COVID-19Yolonda Wilson 18. Disorders of Consciousness, Disability Rights, and Triage during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Even the Best of Intentions Can Lead to BiasJoseph J. Fins 19. Bioethical Issues in Dementia and Alzheimer's DiseaseTia Powell 20. Between “Aid in Dying” and “Assisted Suicide”: Disability Bioethics and the Right to DieHarold Braswell 21. Theorizing the Intersections of Ableism, Sanism, Ageism and Suicidism in Suicide and Physician-Assisted Death DebatesAlexandre Baril Part VII: Disability, Difference, and Healthcare 22. Disability Bioethics and RaceAndrea Pitts 23. Bioethics and the Deaf CommunityTeresa Blankmeyer Burke 24. Hunger Always Wins: Contesting the Medicalization of Fat BodiesAnna Mollow 25. Trans Care within and against the Medical-Industrial ComplexHil Malatino Part VIII: Intellectual and Mental Disabilities 26. Defining Mental Illness & Psychiatric DisabilityLaura Guidry-Grimes 27. Research Ethics and Intellectual Disability: Finding the Middle Ground between Protection and ExclusionKevin Mintz and David Wasserman28. Inconvenient Complications to Patient Choice and Psychiatric Detention: An Auto-ethnographoc Account of Mad CareworkErica Hua Fletcher 29. Disability Bioethics, Ashley X, and Disability Justice for People with Cognitive ImpairmentsChristine Wieseler Part IX: Disability Bioethics: Connections & New Directions 30. Feminist Theorizing and Disability BioethicsLauren Guilmette31. Disability Bioethics and Epistemic InjusticeAnita Ho 32. Disability Studies Meets Animal StudiesDavid Peña-Guzmán Part X: The Ends of Medicine: Caring, Curing, and Justice 33. Improving Access within the ClinicNicole D. Agaronnik and Lisa I. Iezzoni 34. The Goals of Medical TechnologyJoseph A. Stramondo 35. "Why insist on justice, why not settle for kindness?" Kindness, justice, and cognitive disabilityEva Feder Kittay 36. Selections of Brilliant ImperfectionEli Clare

Joel Michael Reynolds is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Disability Studies at Georgetown University, Senior Research Scholar in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Senior Advisor to The Hastings Center, and core faculty in Georgetown’s Disability Studies Program. Reynolds is author of The Life Worth Living: Disability, Pain, and Morality (University of Minnesota Press), the founder of The Journal of Philosophy of Disability, and co-founder of the Oxford Studies in Disability, Ethics, and Society book series from Oxford University Press. Christine Wieseler is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Wieseler is author of articles published in Hypatia, IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, and Social Philosophy Today as well as chapters in two edited book collections.