James Tabery, PhD, MA
Professor of Philosophy
Center for Health Ethics, Arts & Humanities
University of Utah
Abstract: The modern science of pharmacogenomics, which set the stage for precision medicine, was born in a prison outside Chicago 70 years ago. Clinical researchers with the US Army and the University of Chicago used Black prisoners at the Stateville Penitentiary, as well as their family members and other Black community members in the vicinity, to determine why some people have a dangerous reaction to antimalarial drugs. The research, in hindsight, is shocking. There is a large body of research ethics scholarship that reflects on the controversial research conducted at Stateville; oddly, however, the standard version of this story is that the research involved only white prisoners. In this talk, Dr. Tabery will share what he and his colleagues have uncovered about the research involving the Black participants, ask why their contribution to the famous history of precision medicine has been omitted, and consider appropriate ways to remember a community of people whose bodies and blood were used to give rise to precision medicine.
Dr. Tabery is the author of Tyranny of the Gene: Personalized Medicine and Its Threat to Public Health and Beyond Versus: The Struggle to Understand the Interaction of Nature and Nurture, and is a graduate of Pitt’s MA program in bioethics and doctoral program in history and philosophy of science.
This Department of Human Genetics Research Seminar is co-sponsored by the Center for Bioethics & Health Law and the Research, Ethics and Society Initiative of Pitt Research
Catalog of Opportunities Event
Location and Address
Online and in-person in Room A115, School of Public Health