Dr. Charlene Galarneau is Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, and Center for Bioethics; and Associate Professor Emerita at Wellesley College, in Women’s and Gender Studies. Her teaching and research explore the ethics of health care, public health, and health policy. Recent research topics include U.S. eugenics, racism in bioethics, gender-affirming care, and USPHS STD experiments in Guatemala. Galarneau’s book, Communities of Health Care Justice, cultivates a concept of community justice that understands communities as critical participants in determining the nature of just health care. Her interest in ethics was initially motivated by her work with rural community/migrant health centers and the communities they serve.

Description
Dominant narratives of US eugenics portray a by-gone era, led by academic elites promoting pseudo-science, and concluding when the harms of Nazi eugenics became known. Emerging critical analyses reveal a more complex history entailing diverse eugenic experiences by race, ability, gender, indigeneity, and national origin that reflect a mutable, multilayered eugenic logic that endures to the present day. Bioethics has a role to play both in addressing past harm (what is a just response?) and in identifying
and analyzing eugenic features present today in genetic technologies, reproductive health care, as well as land conservation and immigration policy. Considerations of who is “fit” continue to enervate social, political, and health care decision-making in the U.S.

Learning Objectives
After this session, attendees will be able to
1) understand the ways social inequities (e.g. racism) undergird U.S. eugenics,
2) identify expressions of eugenics logic in the present day, and
3) articulate ways that bioethics can contribute to a non-eugenic future.