I am committed to engaging with issues of inequality and oppression, in their many forms, within my bioethical and philosophical scholarship. For several years, I have argued that the practice of non-consensual educational pelvic exams on anesthetized patients by medical students is morally problematic and that all patients should have the opportunity to consent for an intimate exam is performed on their unconscious body. This scholarship, along with the legal advocacy of Robin Wilson’s team at the Epstein Program and the voices of many others, has led to a sweeping legislative shift in the United States, with 13 new laws requiring consent for pelvic exams on anesthetized patients being passed since 2021, and dozens being introduced.

I have also written about issues related to race and medical research, including how white ignorance shows up in pain research and how placebo /nocebo effects are likely to be unfairly distributed across populations as a result of the unequal treatment of racialized patients in the clinical encounter. Further work on inequality and medicine includes a critical discussion of the role of personal responsibility in decisions related to resource allocation in health care, and an investigation of the push away from using the term ‘medically assisted suicide’.