Biologisms on the left and the right

Victorian Britain saw the rise of biologism, the practice of attributing biological cause to that which is explicable either wholly or in part by environment. Its most extreme expression was eugenics, first disseminated by Galton through Macmillan’s Magazine in 1865. I explore early British eugenics as a biologistic discourse centred on class which took aim primarily at the “residuum”, or “submerged tenth”, the section of the working class alleged to be least productive. It was framed by racism, the biologism on which much late-Victorian imperialism was based. I consider ways in which biologisms inform distinct twenty-first-century discourse and practice, from policies around child benefit to Covid19, and focus on one thread of biologistic thought as it extends to debates on gender identity – the idea that gender is both a feeling but also innate and brain-based. I conclude that gender identity theory risks, however inadvertently, reinscribing biologistic ideas and stereotypes.

Covid-19 Vaccine Nationalism and Vaccine Diplomacy: A New Currency in Soft Power?

This article merges and examines the following four phenomena, (1) pandemics which are predominantly a human security matter, (2) vaccines and vaccinations, which are predominantly a public health matter, (3), power which is the alpha currency in international relations and, (4), finally ideology. Global developments such as wars, revolutions and pandemics usually give rise to new forms of power, redrawing power configurations and in some cases shifting and redrawing biographical and geographical boundaries. This article explores the rise of vaccine nationalism and how it will impede the global efforts to curtail the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic. I also present the Covid-19 vaccine as a new currency in soft power that, unlike hard power, is owned by an emerging vaccine oligarchy epitomised as Big Pharma. Vaccine nationalism is positioned as being counterproductive to efforts to reduce the effects of the virus. This way, vaccine nationalism and vaccine diplomacy constitute new forms of and fronts for colonialism. I conclude by asserting that vaccine nationalism will result in more asymmetrical power relations in international relations as the vaccine will gradually become a new form of soft power. As a form of soft power, the vaccine will entrench and perpetuate coloniality. Vaccine nationalism and vaccine diplomacy are self-defeating, will aid those paddling eugenics and result in a new form of inequality, vaccine inequality.

Writing a history of learning disabilities as Joey's dad

It is perhaps inevitable that the academic study of learning disabilities is often undertaken by established scholars with little lived experience of the condition. So, what has it been like for someone from outside the academy, with a long career in the arts, who is also the father of a severely learning-disabled young man, to write a book-length history of learning disabilities in culture and society? How is it possible to reconcile such a biological reality with the many caveats about the social construction of the condition? How can we retain a belief in scientific analysis when the categorisation of learning-disabled people seems to have caused as many problems as it solves? Furthermore, how can such an account be attempted when so much of the written record is by people who are placed in positions of power over learning-disabled people and when the true voice of experience is so often silenced, or, like the author's son, silent? The attempt to answer these questions reveals a field rich with contradiction. Despite some advances, much of the social and cultural history of learning disabilities tells a tale of neglect, abandonment and abuse, with confused cultural attitudes too often shaping practice. When the telescope is reversed, however, severe learning disabilities provide us with a kind of Brechtian "alienation effect" which reveals the fault lines running through so many progressive movements and helps us to frame them historically, while also challenging assumptions about how those with severe learning disabilities are regarded and can best be given the support and freedom that they need.

Triage 4.0: On Death Algorithms and Technological Selection. Is Today's Data- Driven Medical System Still Compatible with the Constitution?

Health data bear great promises for a healthier and happier life, but they also make us vulnerable. Making use of millions or billions of data points, Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are now creating new benefits. For sure, harvesting Big Data can have great potentials for the health system, too. It can support accurate diagnoses, better treatments and greater cost effectiveness. However, it can also have undesirable implications, often in the sense of undesired side effects, which may in fact be terrible. Examples for this, as discussed in this article, are discrimination, the mechanisation of death, and genetic, social, behavioural or technological selection, which may imply eugenic effects or social Darwinism. As many unintended effects become visible only after years, we still lack sufficient criteria, long-term experience and advanced methods to reliably exclude that things may go terribly wrong. Handing over decision-making, responsibility or control to machines, could be dangerous and irresponsible. It would also be in serious conflict with human rights and our constitution.

Abolishing the Broom Closets in Omelas: Feminist Disability Analysis of Crisis and Precarity

Ursula K. Le Guin's 1973 short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" depicts a utopian city where the happiness of most of the citizens depends on the misery of a child who lives in a broom closet. We activate the story in the midst of a global pandemic which is laying bare the pre-existing conditions of precarity under gendered settler racial capitalism. We interpret Le Guin's story through an intersectional feminist disability lens, emphasizing the necessity of attending to disability and the carceral institutionalization of disabled people as key to understanding how precarity is distributed. We make the case that "Omelas" represents places of disability confinement, specifically the institutionalization of disabled people in psychiatric and congregate facilities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. By examining two such institutions in Salem, Oregon (Omelas spelled backwards), we make explicit the connections between capitalist precarity and carceral disablement. We argue that disability is key to understanding the capitalist crisis because disablement and the construction of the ability/disability binary has been a key mechanism for constructing disposability in the crisis of capitalism. Turning from crisis of late stage capitalism to the crisis of genre, we show that Le Guin's story forces us to confront the role of ongoing eugenics and ableism in the imagination of feminist abolition. We show how "Omelas" offers a different kind of abolitionist horizon in the form of the "ones who walk away." We, however, push to identify with the child in the broom closet and not the ones for whom the story poses a dilemma. We end with the psych survivors and self-advocacy organizers who cannot physically "walk away," but who instead lead the fight for the abolition of the broom closet from within.

The ethics of genetic screening for beta thalassemia in Vietnam.

In this paper, I argue that genetic screening for beta thalassemia major is ethically justified in the context of Vietnam. First, I differentiate genetic screening from the moral objections commonly associated with eugenics on the basis of the primary motive for screening (avoidance of suffering) and the preservation of voluntary choice. To lay the groundwork for ethical discussion, I explain the basics of beta thalassemia biochemistry and screening and the clinical picture of beta thalassemia major. I then elaborate on a specific example of the challenges of beta thalassemia major in Cyprus before moving on to the case of Vietnam and discuss the improbability of treatment for this disorder in Vietnam and therefore, the extensive suffering that it causes the Vietnamese people. This leads to my argument that a beta thalassemia screening in Vietnam would hold up the ethical principle of nonmaleficence and also preserves and enhances reproductive choice. I then propose that Vietnam's successful COVID-19 response can be used as a roadmap for beta thalassemia screening.