Decolonial Critical Bioethics and Access to Treatment for Hemophilia in the Americas

Over the past two decades, the integration of sociology with the analytical and normative practices of bioethics has become firmly established. This integration has given rise to two similar yet distinct conceptions of bioethics: empirical bioethics, which utilizes social sciences to enhance ethical scrutiny, and critical bioethics, which not only employs research methods but also draws from established social theories. Critical bioethics aims to overcome the decontextualized analyses inherent in the concept of applied ethics, which relies solely on moral philosophy. This epistemic deepening enables a comprehensible evaluation of the impacts of biotechnologies’ production and distribution within their social and global contexts, ultimately leading to more robust normative frameworks. This article presents the conceptual framework of a model of critical bioethics that we term “decolonial”, developed through the synthesis of the Frankfurt School and decolonial studies. To illustrate the relevance of its analytical parameters, we will examine to clotting factor concentrates in countries across the Americas.