News and Upcoming Events

The Center for Bioethics and Social Justice is now accepting applications for an assistant professor-tenure system position. The successful applicant’s duties will be based on an effort distribution that includes research, teaching, and outreach/service. Review of applications is ongoing. Visit posting 804499 at careers.msu.edu for full details and to apply.

This webinar was presented by Leonard M. Fleck, PhD, on November 16 as part of our Bioethics Public Seminar Series. Dr. Fleck addresses the extremely complex problems of health care justice generated by metastatic cancer and costly precision medicines. The recording is available with closed captions.

A new study by researchers at Cornell and Michigan State University finds that microaggressions – comments or subtle insults based on stereotypes – change how people with disabilities use social media.

"Online microaggressions have the ability to shape the understandings of disability for a lot of people who are not even involved in the situation," said study co-author and Center Assistant Professor Megh Marathe, PhD. Visit our blog to learn more about this work that was presented at the 2022 Association for Computing Machinery SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility.

Visit our blog to read an interview with Center Professor Leonard M. Fleck, PhD, on his new book Precision Medicine and Distributive Justice: Wicked Problems for Democratic Deliberation. The interview explores the importance of democratic deliberation regarding the use of targeted cancer therapies.

"I’ve spent 50 years of my life thinking about this issue. And it’s only grown and become more complex over those 50 years, because of all the emerging life prolonging medical technologies that have come to be."

Visit our blog to read a commentary by Center Director Sean A. Valles, PhD, on a new partnership with the Center for Values in International Development, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.

"In the spirit of the desire to always do better next time in international development, the Center for Values in International Development has partnered with the Michigan State University Center for Bioethics and Social Justice. Our centers share a fundamental optimism that despite the injustices of the world, and the world’s mixed track record of attempts to make them better, the goal of creating a more equitable world is well worth working for."

Can society and the judicial system keep pace with the technologies of in vitro fertilization (IVF), stem cell biology, artificial wombs, and in vitro gestation? Brews and Views returned in September and featured a panel of MSU faculty who provided perspectives on innovations to the science of human reproduction. Visit our blog to learn more.