TrueSciPhi

Podcast Profile: Bio(un)ethical

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22 episodes
2023 to 2025
Median: 81 minutes
Collection: Philosophy

Description (podcaster-provided):

Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):

This podcast explores contested norms and decision-making in medicine, science, and public health through interviews with clinicians, philosophers, lawyers, bioethicists, and policy experts. Conversations often focus on how ethical principles, empirical evidence, and institutional incentives interact in real-world settings, especially when stakes are high and uncertainty is significant.

A recurring theme is the governance of health and biomedical research. The show examines how research risks and benefits should be assessed, what justifies oversight systems such as institutional review boards, and whether current protections—particularly for children and other potentially vulnerable groups—strike the right balance between safeguarding participants and enabling valuable studies. Related discussions address how ethical standards are taught and measured within professional training.

The podcast also tackles questions of fairness and inclusion in clinical care and health policy. Topics include how scarce medical resources should be allocated during crises, how to design public participation in science and health policymaking, and why access problems can persist even in areas with many physicians. Several episodes probe how social position shapes knowledge and credibility, including debates in standpoint epistemology, the nature of moral expertise, and the role of democratic deliberation versus technical expertise.

Issues of race, identity, and measurement appear in discussions about what race is and how, if at all, race should be used in medical algorithms and risk prediction. The show connects these conceptual questions to practical consequences in diagnosis, treatment, and population health.

End-of-life ethics and patient-centered care are another focus, including how medical decisions align (or fail to align) with patients’ values and how assisted dying policies raise difficult questions. The podcast also ranges into broader, forward-looking ethical problems such as pandemic prevention and the regulation of risky pathogen research, existential risk and decision-making under deep uncertainty, and the moral status of nonhuman animals and potential future AI systems. Overall, the series emphasizes careful argument, clarifying concepts, and scrutinizing prevailing assumptions that shape healthcare and science.