Present Injustices

Nitrile Gloves

  • More than 30,000 migrants from Myanmar, Indonesia and Vietnam work in Malaysia鈥檚 glove industry鈥攕upplying 2/3rds of the total global demand for nitrile gloves. While the cost of a pair of nitrile gloves is currently around $0.28, this doesn鈥檛 begin to reflect the true cost of these items, which in many cases includes debt bondage, forced labor and abusive conditions for factory workers.
  • Learn how your research impacts other people on this planet, both within your community and outside of it. Share that information with others to raise awareness. When purchasing gloves, ask for information about labor practices used when gloves are manufactured, do the gloves have fair trade certification?

Funding

  • There are many inequities found in STEM ranging from the prevalence of unpaid jobs in STEM to underrepresentation of BIPOC communities in boards and funding committees.
  • The , a US government organization and the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, has found a significant racial gap in grant funding with black applicants reaming 10 percentage points less likely than whites to be awarded NIH Funding1.
  • However, the National Institute of Health (NIH) embarked on a self analysis of their review committees and found that most members were Anglo because of the high-education requirement to be a faculty member, which often involves having a PhD. After this analysis, the NIH decided to waive the requirement to be a faculty member and have started the work to increase BIPOC members on their review committees.听

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Field Research

  • 鈥淩esearch鈥 has a bad reputation with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities due to past injustices. Even Indigenous researchers are viewed with suspicion due to their 鈥淲estern academic training鈥 within their own communities; research thus far has been 鈥渁n encounter between the West and the Other鈥. Western practices of science and research have led some to attempt to patent Indigenous peoples, knowledge, and practices, completely disregarding Indigenous people as human. ()
  • Native American Havasupai Tribe vs ASU (2005) case. The Havasupai tribe sued Arizona State University after scientists took tissue samples the tribe donated for diabetes research and used them without consent to study schizophrenia and inbreeding. 41 members of the Havasupai Tribe settled in April 2010. ASU is reported to have spent upwards of $1.7 million defending itself against the allegations. The terms of the settlement were a payment of $700,000, the return of the blood samples, and additional assistance including scholarships and help in obtaining federal funding for a health clinic for the impoverished tribe2.听

2https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/genetic-research-among-havasupai-cautionary-tale/2011-02