Ethics Washing: The Misappropriation of Ubuntu in the Ethics of Heritable Human Genome Editing (HHGE)

In their argument for equal access to heritable human genome editing (HHGE) as a healthcare service for future generations, Shozi and Thaldar invoke Ubuntu, an African philosophy centered on communal harmony, as a moral foundation. However, their engagement with ubuntu reveals a deeper issue: ethics washing. This practice involves using superficial ethical language to legitimize an agenda — in this case, a liberal one focused on expanding HHGE policy—while concealing a lack of substantive engagement with the invoked principles.

This critique is particularly relevant given Thaldar and colleagues’ recent defence of South Africa’s amended research ethics guidelines, which now appear to permit this controversial form of human genome editing. By positioning ubuntu as a moral justification for HHGE, Shozi and Thaldar’s work aligns with this policy shift, lending it an ethical veneer rooted in African values. However, Ubuntu is invoked here to support predetermined liberal goals, such as distributive equality in access to HHGE, without substantively demonstrating how its principles justify these outcomes. As Nyamnjoh and Ewuoso have argued, their claim that participants in a South African public engagement study naturally drew on ubuntu values is problematic, as it conflates geographic location with epistemic alignment and overlooks the pluralistic, contested nature of African intellectual traditions.

Their paper is not the only one capitalising on increased sensitivity to epistemic justice and representativity in ethical debates. Other examples for instance are the application of Ubuntu to the attribution of morality to elephants,  bioethics, global health justice, moral standing of humanoid robots, AI ethics, epidemic and pandemic response. Yet some of this work falls short of genuinely contributing to epistemic justice. Rather than engaging with African thought as a dynamic intellectual tradition, Ubuntu is instrumentalised to validate predetermined claims. In such work, Ubuntu becomes less a robust philosophical foundation and more a magical elixir of cultural authentication by default. In neglecting relevant critical debates within Ubuntu moral thought, authors bypass important complexities that would otherwise challenge conclusions and assumptions. For instance, Shozi and Thaldar argue that Ubuntu can justify future generations' entitlement to equal access to HHGE. Here, ‘community’ becomes a tortured conceptual beast of burden, forced to carry the justificatory weight through the mere assertion that it binds past, present, and future generations. By contrast, Phila Msimang’s response to Thaldar and colleagues’ emphasizes the ethical imperative of becoming a good ancestor within Ubuntu — a perspective that challenges the acceptance of technology with potential risks to future generations. This is not about weighing in on who holds the correct view. Rather, it underscores that Ubuntu, like all philosophical traditions, resists a single, definitive interpretation; it is inherently dynamic and evolving.

They may argue that their critics are merely bio-conservative reactionaries resisting an African-led ethical framework for HHGE (emphasis mine). This framing is significant, as what is at stake is precisely the meaning of grounding ethical reflections in Africa. An African-led framework should be more than a rhetorical device; it should be rooted in the depth and integrity of African philosophical thought, guiding ethical explorations with its critical richness and complexity. When African philosophy is treated as merely instrumental—a means to validate predetermined claims—its frameworks, like Ubuntu, are stripped of their dynamism and reduced to serving narrow agendas. By repurposing Ubuntu to advance a liberal agenda, Thaldar and Shozi risk narrowing, rather than expanding our ethical purview, ultimately limiting what could be an inclusive, critical examination of HHGE’s ethical implications.

Ultimately, the superficial invocation of marginalized knowledge underscores the dangers of ethics washing in bioethics. The deployment of Ubuntu philosophy in particular, and relational thought in general, may appear to align with calls for non-Western representativity, yet it can also serve to legitimize a narrow set of interests while obscuring critical ethical issues. A genuinely inclusive and global bioethics must resist such tokenism. Bioethics can only benefit from African moral traditions when these are engaged with as genuine, dynamic sources of insight, not as mere symbols or cultural tokens.