The Moral Economy of Death: For-Profit Medicine and Human Dignity

This talk develops an account of profit-driven death in medicine as a moral-epistemic disorder. It asks how preventable deaths produced within for-profit healthcare systems come to appear as acceptable outcomes of valorized economic activity, rather than as violations of human dignity. Drawing on a memoir-in-progress about my father’s death in a major pharmaceutical disaster, I argue that capitalist institutions reshape the conditions under which we recognize persons as ends-in-themselves, encouraging instead a mode of regard in which patients appear primarily as consumers, risk profiles, or sites of profit-extraction. I further argue that the same structures and dynamics that naturalize such deaths also help to depoliticize the grief they generate. Capitalist societies excel at privatizing the emotional aftermath of structural harm, converting grief into an individual burden rather than a political relation. This fragmentation inhibits the formation of collective consciousness and weakens the possibility of shared moral judgment. The talk concludes by considering what narrative and memoir might contribute under these conditions.

Sasha Mudd is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton, and Philosopher-at-Large for Prospect magazine, where she writes a monthly column that brings philosophy to bear on public life. She holds a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge and an MA in Divinity from the University of Chicago.

Her research spans Kant- especially his account of reason and the foundations of normativity—as well as topics at the intersection of ethics, social theory and epistemology. Her recent work examines the ethical pressures introduced by new forms of technological and social organisation, alongside a growing focus on grief, memoir, and the moral limits of for-profit medicine. She has published in journals including European Journal of Philosophy, Social Epistemology, and Kantian Review, and her public-facing essays have appeared in outlets such as The New York Times. She is currently completing a literary memoir, The Dragon.