On Race-Based Affirmative Action in Clinical Trials

Yuichiro Mori (Hokkaido University)

While the debates concerning the justifiability of affirmative action have focused almost exclusively on education and workplaces, a new site of affirmative action, that is, health, began to attract concerns from academics. There are two types of practices related to health where we can argue about affirmative action: allocation of medical resources and clinical trials. The focus of this paper is on the moral justifiability of race-based affirmative action in the practices of the latter. First, I clarify the focus of this paper. Second, I introduce and analyze possible arguments for race-based affirmative action in clinical trials (i.e., arguments from compensation, equality of opportunity, and antidiscrimination) and those against it (i.e., objections based on injustice against majorities, that against minorities, and the mismatch between the aims and means). Finally, I elaborate upon what kind of considerations we need to take into account when determining whether a particular instance of race-based affirmative action in clinical trials is morally justifiable.