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Some barriers to knowledge from the global south: commentary to Pratt and de Vries
  1. Caesar Alimsinya Atuire1,2
  1. 1 Philosophy and Classics, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana
  2. 2 Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  1. Correspondence to Professor Caesar Alimsinya Atuire, Philosophy and Classics, University of Ghana, Accra, Accra, Ghana; atuire.ca{at}gmail.com

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Pratt and de Vries1 pose an important and uncomfortable question to all stakeholders in the global bioethics space. If global bioethics as they define it is ‘the ethics of public health and healthcare problems that are characterised by a global level effect or that require action beyond individual countries, and the ethics of research related to such problems’, one would expect justice and inclusivity to be among the ethical priorities. Yet, Pratt and de Vries carefully demonstrate how different forms of epistemic injustice and coloniality are embedded in the structure, generation of knowledge and praxis of global bioethics. They do this by unpicking three layers at which coloniality and epistemic injustice operate; knowledge-producer, knowledge-applied and knowledge-solicited. The authors also offer a three-pronged incremental approach to how individual and institutional actors in global bioethics can contribute to epistemic justice in the field.

Pratt and de Vries present their work as ‘a first step towards reorienting the field’ of global health bioethics away from epistemic injustice. Indeed, theirs is a mapping, problem statement and recommendations piece …

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Footnotes

  • Twitter @atuire

  • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

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