Ethics in Human Biology: A Historical Perspective on Present Challenges

The practice of human biology requires the negotiation of a range of ethical issues, including the politics of race and indigeneity, the appropriate use of research materials, and the relationship between researchers and those people from whose bodies they seek to gain knowledge. Grounding my discussion in a history of the field, I discuss key ethical turning points that have shaped the present. These include the field's complex historical relationship to race and colonialism and the implications this relationship has for research, including the needs and desires of Indigenous peoples. This review demonstrates that human biology has been a crucible for many of the most complex ethical issues facing anthropology and allied practices of biomedicine and life science. Its future success as a field is inextricable from its practitioners' ability to adapt in ways that foster the trust and engagement of those humans whose bodies constitute the basis for their knowledge making.