"Blood Bans: A Case Study of Defenses of Stereotyping in Medical Contexts" - Prof. Rima Basu (CMC) - Final Colloquium on Stereotyping & Medical AI

Rima Basu (Claremont McKenna College)

We are very pleased to announce our final colloquium in this series of colloquia on Stereotyping & Medical AI,organised by the Sowerby Philosophy & Medicine Project:   

"Blood Bans: A Case Study of Defense of Stereotyping in Medical Contexts"

Speaker: Professor Rima Basu (Claremont McKenna College)

Abstract

Stereotyping in medical contexts is often considered to be less problematic than stereotyping in other domains. In medical contexts, doctors can use well-evidenced stereotypes as a tool to shrink the space of theoretical possibilities to arrive at more accurate diagnoses. Such stereotypes can also serve as useful epistemic shortcuts. However, these stereotypes may nevertheless be morally impermissible. This creates the need to be able to identify the difference between rightful and wrongful stereotyping. This paper explores the explanations that have been offered for the differential treatment of gay and bisexual men with respect to blood donations in order to develop an account of the difference. Statistically, gay and bisexual men remain a high risk group for HIV transmission and such evidence has been used to ban or defer gay and bisexual men from blood donations. I argue that such policies, despite their evidential basis, wrongfully stereotype gay and bisexual men. To arrive at that conclusion we will need to look closely at the history of these policies and the moral and epistemic defenses that have been offered in support of this kind of stereotyping. I argue that each such defense fails.

About the Speaker

Professor Basu is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. Her areas of research expertise include Epistemology, Ethics and Moral Issues, and Race and Social Problems. The central theme of her work is that when it comes to what we should believe, morality is not voiceless. What we owe each other is not just a matter of what we do or what we say, but also what we believe. You can read more about her work in this short Aeon article, "To avoid moral failure, don’t see people as Sherlock does".

About the Summer Colloquium Series on Stereotyping & Medical AI

The aim of this series on Stereotyping and Medical AI is to explore philosophical and in particular ethical and epistemological issues around stereotyping in medicine, with a specific focus on the use of artificial intelligence in health contexts. We are particularly interested in whether medical AI that uses statistical data to generate predictions about individual patients can be said to “stereotype” patients, and whether we should draw the same ethical and epistemic conclusions about stereotyping by artificial agents as we do about stereotyping by human agents, i.e., medical professionals. 

Other questions we are interested in exploring as part of this series include but are not limited to the following:

• How should we understand “stereotyping” in medical contexts?
• What is the relationship between stereotyping and bias, including algorithmic bias (and how should we understand “bias” in different contexts?)?
• Why does stereotyping in medicine often seem less morally or epistemically problematic than stereotyping in other domains, such as in legal, criminal, financial, educational, etc., domains? Might beliefs about biological racial realism in the medical context explain this asymmetry?
• When and why might it be wrong for medical professionals to stereotype their patients? And when and why might it be wrong for medical AI, i.e. artificial agents, to stereotype patients?
• How do (medical) AI beliefs relate to the beliefs of human agents, particularly with respect to agents’ moral responsibility for their beliefs?
• Can non-evidential or non-truth-related considerations be relevant with respect to what beliefs medical professionals or medical AI ought to hold? Is there moral or pragmatic encroachment on AI beliefs or on the beliefs of medical professionals?
• What are potential consequences of either patients or doctors being stereotyped by doctors or by medical AI in medicine? Can, for example, patients be doxastically wronged by doctors or AI in virtue of being stereotyped by them?

We will be tackling these topics through a series of online colloquia hosted by the Sowerby Philosophy and Medicine Project at King's College London. The colloquium series will feature a variety contributors from across the disciplinary spectrum. We hope to ensure a discursive format with time set aside for discussion and Q&A by the audience. This event is open to the public and all are welcome. 

Please find the schedule for the Stereotyping & Medical AI online summer colloquium series below: 

June 17  Professor Erin Beeghly (Utah), “Stereotyping and Prejudice: The Problem of Statistical Stereotyping” 

July 1 Dr. Kathleen Creel, (HAI, EIS, Stanford) “Let's Ask the Patient: Stereotypes, Personalization, and Risk in Medical AI”

July 15  Dr. Annette Zimmermann (York, Harvard), "Structural Injustice, Doxastic Negligence, and Medical AI"

July 22  Dr. William McNeill (Southampton), "Neural Networks and Explanatory Opacity"

July 29  Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion: Dr. Jonathan Gingerich (KCL), Dr. Reuben Binns (Oxford), Prof. Georgi Gardiner (Tennessee), Prof. David Papineau (KCL), Chair: Robin Carpenter(London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare)

August 12  Professor Zoë Johnson King (USC) & Professor Boris Babic(Toronto), "Algorithmic Fairness and Resentment"

September 2  Dr. Geoff Keeling (HAI, LCFI, Google), "Enabling Fairness in Healthcare Through Machine Learning"

September 9  Professor Rima Basu (Claremont McKenna), "Blood Bans: A Case Study of Defenses of Stereotyping in Medical Contexts"

*Please note that this colloquium will not be recorded. So we very much hope you’ll turn up at this smashingly exciting, final colloquium in our series! However, you can view recordings of previous colloquia by the Philosophy & Medicine Project in this and other series here on the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s website: https://www.philosophyandmedicine.org/summercolloquia 

Register for this event here: