Abstract
The relationship between bioethics and advocacy is a contentious issue in bioethics and in medical contexts where advocacy and activism seek to advance the interests of particular groups or populations. This chapter raises this issue in connection with intersex, also termed disorders (or differences) of sex development. We present an interview between an intersex advocate and an academic who teaches bioethics. The interview explores what bioethics offers to intersex advocacy, by placing bioethics among a range of discourses on which contemporary intersex advocacy draws. The interview also explores what intersex advocacy offers to bioethics. The interview concludes that advocacy should be pursued when bioethics fails to achieve outcomes in medicine that are grounded in firm evidence and human rights norms.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the students in “Biomedicine and Society” at the University of Sydney, who contributed to the discussion of the issues raised by this chapter over the 15 years that the course was offered.
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Carpenter, M., Jordens, C.F.C. (2022). When Bioethics Fails: Intersex, Epistemic Injustice and Advocacy. In: Walker, M. (eds) Interdisciplinary and Global Perspectives on Intersex. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91475-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91475-2_7
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