Justice and Current Issues in Medicine and Biology

Vocabulary flashcards covering legal landmarks, bioethics, public health disparities, COVID-19, the Yemen cholera outbreak, and historical medical ethics.

19th Amendment

A 1919 constitutional amendment that gave American women the right to vote.

Obergefell v. Hodges

A landmark 2015 Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage across all 50 states.

George Floyd Justice in Policing Act

A 2021 legislative measure that enacts new measures to help hold law enforcement accountable for using unjustified force.

CRISPR Cas9

A cheap and relatively easy-to-use genome editing tool originating from bacteria that can replace defective genes with working copies to understand and treat genetic diseases.

Designer Babies

A term referring to children whose physical characteristics are intentionally chosen and altered by parents using gene-editing technology.

Forensic DNA Analysis

The application of DNA technology and locus matching in criminal justice to identify suspects from crime scene samples.

COVID-19

A global pandemic disease transmitted through airborne respiratory droplets and bodily fluids, causing a range of symptoms from mild to serious illness.

Justice in Public Health

The fair and equitable distribution of medical resources, facilities, treatments, protective equipment, and healthcare information to ensure no group is unfairly disadvantaged.

Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

A historical medical study that created deep distrust in the healthcare system among communities of color, increasing susceptibility to modern vaccine misinformation.

Vibrio cholerae

A bacterium transmitted through infected water that causes cholera, a disease characterized by acute watery diarrhea.

WaSH Infrastructure

Water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure essential for maintaining public health, the destruction of which heavily contributed to the massive cholera outbreak in Yemen.

J Marion Sims

A 19th-century American surgeon known as the founder of modern surgical gynecology who conducted unethical experimental surgeries without anesthesia on enslaved Black women.

Vesicovaginal Fistula

An abnormal opening between the bladder and the vagina that causes continuous and unremitting urinary incontinence.

Anarcha

An enslaved African American woman who underwent 30 surgical procedures performed by J Marion Sims before he successfully cured vesicovaginal fistulas.