Racist appearance standards and the enhancements that love them: norman daniels and skin-lightening cosmetics

Bioethics

Volumn 25, Issue 4, 2011, Pages 185-191

  Lamkin, Matt ^a  

^a NONE   (United States)

Author keywords

Cosmetics; Enhancement; Justice; Norman Daniels; Racism; Skin tone; Skin lightening

Indexed keywords

COSMETIC;

ARTICLE; ETHICS; GENETIC ENHANCEMENT; HISTORY; HUMAN; NEGRO; RNA INTERFERENCE; SKIN PIGMENTATION; SOCIAL JUSTICE; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY;

AFRICAN CONTINENTAL ANCESTRY GROUP; COSMETICS; ETHICAL ANALYSIS; GENETIC ENHANCEMENT; HISTORY, 21ST CENTURY; HUMANS; PREJUDICE; RNA INTERFERENCE; SKIN PIGMENTATION; SOCIAL JUSTICE;

EID: 79955017891     PISSN: 02699702     EISSN: 14678519     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2009.01755.x     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. N.K. Anderson2005What is Beauty? The Discourse Continues. Global Health Nexus. Available at: [Accessed 6 Nov (collecting research regarding some of the advantages of being perceived as attractive2008
2. J. HerschProfiling the New Immigrant WorkerThe Effects of Skin Color and Height.J Labor Econ2008262345 386
3. N. Daniels2008Just HealthCambridge: Cambridge University Press: 298 (noting studies showing physicians tend to under-utilize important treatments, like cardiac catheterization and renal transplantation, when treating black patients, even as they over-utilize these treatments with white patients suffering from the same symptoms
4. While the concept of race generally is thought to encompass more than skin tone, [i]n the real world, however, race and skin colour are often understood to be synonymous. Society has long tended to distribute resources according to racial differences, as interpreted through skin tone. O.K. Obasogie. Racial Alchemy. New Scientist 18 August: 152007
5. C. Elliot2003Better Than Well. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd190 193
6. G. Shuyler1989Black No More. Boston: Northeastern University Press
7. Obasogie, op. cit. note 5 (summarizing recent discoveries
8. J. Marshall2007Skin colourcracking the genetic codeNew Scientist 10 March.
9. Because healthcare systems, appearance standards, and the understanding and history of categories such as race, vary widely across societies, this analysis is necessarily limited in scope. Accordingly, this article considers skin-lightening interventions within the context of American society
10. The term enhancements, which is value-loaded in its general use, is particularly fraught in the context of interventions designed to modify race-related appearance traits. As used in this article, the term denotes biomedical interventions undertaken for any purpose other than the treatment of disease, and is not intended to suggest that a person who has undergone an enhancement has necessarily been improved thereby
11. discussing Daniels's revision of the central argument of his book, Just Health Care, to encompass not just healthcare, but meeting health needs generally1985
12. Ibid (rejecting the use of human growth hormone to make short but healthy children taller, while acknowledging that doing so would promote their opportunities
13. Daniels does not claim, however, that this primary rationale is either a necessary or sufficient condition for finding a societal obligation to provide a medical intervention: It is not a sufficient condition because we also have to weigh this claim about obligations against other such claims under resource constraints. We may, for example, have to make judgments about which health needs are more important to meet. Nor is meeting such a health need a necessary condition for including a medical service among those we owe each other. Our obligation to protect the equality of women requires us to cover nontherapeutic abortions. But this rationale clearly goes beyond the primary rationale, since an unwanted pregnancy is not a disease or disability
14. Ibid. People generally agree that this natural baseline forms a reasonable and relevant basis for public action despite many other disagreements they may have about other issues of value. Despite many other sorts of comprehensive moral views, people generally agree that maintaining normal functioning contributes in a reasonable and central way to protecting opportunity: 155
15. Daniels, op. cit. note 3303
16. Daniels, op. cit. note 322
17. As noted above, op. cit. note 19, in Daniels's view the presence of a disease is not a sufficient condition for finding a societal obligation to provide treatment, since many departures from normal functioning may have little, if any, effect on an individual's range of opportunity. Accordingly, determining when society is obligated to provide a medical intervention requires assessing the impact of a disease on opportunity and considering whether promoting fair equality of opportunity is better accomplished by treating the disease or allocating resources elsewhere
18. Note, however, that Daniels argues society is obligated to provide nontherapeutic abortions, notwithstanding the fact that these procedures are enormously controversial in the US. Ibid
19. Carl Elliot has keenly observed that while failing to meet societal standards can be a source of shame, in American society conformity is considered a sign of weakness that confers a shame of its own. Ibid202 203
20. Daniels300noting studies that have found that people who internalize rather than resist discrimination have higher blood pressure
21. that there is good reason to think that many enhancements will pose serious problems not posed by treatments, and arguing that determining whether these problems warrant restricting access to certain enhancements requires more careful discussion Norman Daniels.Normal Functioning and the Treatment-Enhancement Distinction. Camb Q Healthc Ethics20009309 322
22. Daniels151
23. J. Rawls1971A Theory of JusticeCambridge MA: Harvard University PressDaniels, op. cit. note 351 52