ELSI Friday Forum: Building a Diverse ELSI Workforce: What does this mean and how should we do it?

Bioethics as a field was catalyzed by grave injustices such as the US Public Health Service Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. Similarly, a major rationale for ELSI was to address the injustices perpetrated and rationalized by the growing science of human genetics. However, bioethics and ELSI attention to justice issues, especially those affecting marginalized populations, has been lacking. To facilitate a stronger focus on justice, leading bioethics and ELSI scholars have made recommendations for action, calling for greater diversity in the bioethics/ELSI workforce, and reinforcing bioethics education. In this session, we will explore these recommendations in practical terms, discuss how or if they might need to be expanded to address broader types of diversity, and what challenges will be posed to achieving them.