Ethics in Practice

What if saying sorry isn’t enough? This episode urges us to think more deeply about wrongdoing, silence, complicity and solidarity in bioethics. Vanessa and Jantina reflect on the power—and limits—of an apology, including Vanessa’s experience of chairing the Committee that secured redressal from the White House for Public Health Department's infamous study on Syphilis at Tuskegee.

Vanessa Northington Gamble is a University Professor of Medical Humanities at the George Washington University, USA. She is the first woman and first African American to hold this prestigious, endowed faculty position.

Jantina de Vries is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where she also founded the Ethics Lab to centre Africa as the context and driver of bioethics in scholarship.

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This podcast is funded by Wellcome.

Complete show notes + transcript

ALSO CHECK OUT

1. Vanessa Northington Gamble’s website
2. Jantina de Vries’ publications
3. The history of the hospital at Tuskegee by NPR
4. The Syphilis Study was brought to public light with this, this, this and this article by the New York Times (1972)
5. Ethics Lab at the University of Cape Town
6. Archival footage of President Clinton apologising for the US Public Health Service’s study on Syphilis in Tuskegee. At the White House, 1997.
7. Vanessa led a Committee to demand redressal for the US Public Health Service’s study on Syphilis. Here is their final report from 1996.
8. Archival footage of the March over Edmund Pettus Bridge (1965)
9. Selma to Montgomery March
10. Solidarity Now by Mie Inoye, and Jodi Dean’s response to it.

Amar Jesani and Joseph Ali discuss how bioethical systems are built through institutions, resistance, and everyday practice. They encourage us to consider the multi-dimensional aspects of systems, including how they are actively contested and constructed and the dynamics between institutional insiders and outsiders.

Amar started his career as an activist and has played a pivotal role in shaping the field of bioethics in India. Joseph is an Associate Professor and the Associate Director for Global Programs at Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Ethics, USA. He has been involved in establishing and operating various programmes to strengthen bioethics in his home country and internationally.

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This podcast is funded by Wellcome.

Complete show notes + transcript

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1. Medico Friend Circle - Established in 1974
2. Civil Rights Act (1964) and The Civil Rights Movement (1945-1968)
3. Joseph Ali’s collaboration on defining Malaysia's health research ethics system through a stakeholder-driven approach
4. Photos on The Emergency in India (1975-1977) with further information on Wikipedia
5. An archival account of how Amar and his colleagues contested for the elections for the Maharashtra Medical Council in 1993.
6. This case study by the University of Warwick and this article by the British Medical Association (BMA) on the pushbacks for a unified health service in the UK.
7. Health Insurance and Canadian Public Policy by Malcolm G. Taylor,
8. The Belmont Report, 1976
9. ICMR or the Indian Council of Medical Research’s guidelines on bioethics over the years
10. Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME) and its archive

Medical ethics is more than a module—it’s a mindset. In this episode, Mario Vaz and Jordan Parsons reflect on how they try to go beyond lectures and focus on reflexivity as one of the skills that matters deeply in real-world care.

Mario was a Professor and the Head of Physiology at St John’s Medical College, Bengaluru (India). He has retired now. Jordan is an Assistant Professor in Medical Ethics and Law at Birmingham Medical School (UK).

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This podcast is funded by Wellcome.

Complete show notes + transcript

ALSO CHECK OUT.

1. Mario Vaz’s paper on the historical attempts to include ethics in medical education in India
2. Barna Ganguly’s paper on how bioethics is taught at the undergraduate level to medical students in India. It relates to the Attitude, Ethics and Communication module that Mario mentions
3. Mario’s views on the importance of positive role models in medical education (Open access)
4. Heidi Lempp’s paper on the hidden curriculum in medical education in the UK (Open access)
5. Manjulika Vaz’s article on how reflective writing helped medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic (Open access)
6. Sunil Pandya’s review of Bench to Bedside: An Anthology of Medical Student Narratives. (Open access)
7. Episode 2 - The Ethics of Being There: Fieldwork, Doubt and Meaning with Supriya Subramani and Anna Dowrick

Supriya Subramani and Anna Dowrick share their journey of designing and conducting qualitative research on health interventions and lived experiences. Through rich discussion, they challenge conventional views of research, offering fresh insights into theory, reflexivity, and the human side of academic inquiry.

Supriya is a Lecturer at the University of Sydney and Anna is a Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford. We hope you find their exchange meaningful.

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This podcast is funded by Wellcome.

Complete show notes + transcript

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1. Anna’s paper on improving access to support for those who have experienced domestic violence
2. Supriya’s PhD on informed consent in the Indian medical judiciary
3. Supriya on the concept of respect in clinical practice, and recognition and self-respect.
4. Anna’s paper on how UK’s health workers experienced COVID-19
5. Finn Mackay on feminist theory
6. Recommended reading - Anti-Racism Classroom Collective
7. The Cultural Politics of Emotion - Sara Ahmed
8. Communion: The Female Search for Love by bell hooks
9. Supriya’s papers on practising reflexivity - 2019 and 2025
10. Adrienne Marie Brown on Instagram
11. Anna’s paper on vaccine anxieties during COVID-19
12. Anna picked Didier Fassin’s quote on discomfort from this reader

Nicole and Christina share their experience of resisting hierarchies and creating space for subjugated knowledge in academia. Leaving us with an alternative way of seeing health, research, and bioethics that is not only relevant for this episode but the whole series.

Nicole Redvers is a member of the Denı́nu Kų́ę́ First Nation (Northwest Territories, Canada). She is an Associate Professor, Western Research Chair and the Director of Indigenous Planetary Health at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University. Christina Lee manages Knowledge Exchange for the Disability Matters Programme at the University of Sheffield, UK.

The audio quality of this episode tends to fluctuate. Please listen to it in a quiet environment / with headphones if you can.

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This podcast is funded by Wellcome.

Complete show notes + transcript

ALSO CHECK OUT

1. Nicole Redvers on how climate breakdown affects health in the sub-Arctic region
2. Christina Lee’s essay on Buddhist Self-Help Healing Narratives and the Meditative Turn
3. Crossings by Christina
4. Complaint by Sara Ahmed
5. Criposium 2020
6. This blog and journal article by Christina on disability and the medical humanities
7. How indigenous knowledge can be integrated with health research, by Nicole -
   1. Common strategies to recruit American Indian and Alaskan Natives in RCTs
   2. Defining nutrition through American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian worldviews
8. This collection of papers from scholars who are challenging their disciplines with disability studies. - Disability Matters.
9. Dan Goodley on Disability Matters
10. The revised Hippocratic oath