Radical Bioethics: Difference, Disability, and Desiderata

Abstract

With diatoms—globally abundant single cell algae—as both a model and an extreme example of diversity among a single species, Radical Bioethics examines narrow constructions of human diversity as a failure of imagination and a refusal to recognize disability as another instance of difference. Along with other disciplines, bioethics has been slow to consider its biases, inherited from a history of social constructions, against people with disability. Both desire and desiderata offer an alternative to harms committed against people with disability in matters relating to initiatives that foster their inclusion as critical participants in and rightful recipients of the commonweal.