hero image
Sean Valles - Michigan State University. East Lansing, MI, US

Sean Valles

Associate Professor | Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI, UNITED STATES

I study the interplay of ethics and scientific evidence in population health, including race and migration issues and climate change issues.

Media

Publications:

Sean Valles Publication

Documents:

Photos:

loading image

Videos:

A Culture of Humility for a Culture of Health | Sean Valles | TEDxMSU Conference Papers Session #1--Sean Valles and Andrea Smith A Culture of Humility for a Culture of Health | Sean Valles | TEDxMSU

Audio/Podcasts:

Biography

Sean Valles is an Associate Professor with a dual appointment in the Michigan State University Lyman Briggs College and the Department of Philosophy. His research spans a range of topics in the philosophy of population health, from the use of evidence in medical genetics to the roles played by race concepts in epidemiology. He is author of the the 2018 book, Philosophy of Population Health: Philosophy for a New Public Health Era. He is also Director of the MSU Science and Society @ State Program, supporting interdisciplinary faculty collaborations that join the humanities, arts, and sciences.

Industry Expertise (2)

Research

Education/Learning

Areas of Expertise (9)

Philosophy of Population Health

Race in Science

Health Justice

Climate Change Philosophy

Population Health Ethics

Public Health Ethics

Health Equity

Philosophy of Science

Race in Medicine

Education (1)

Indiana University: Ph.D., History and Philosophy of Science 2010

News (1)

Getting more people vaccinated against Covid-19 means wasting doses

Wall Street Journal  online

2021-05-21

When Covid-19 vaccines first arrived at health departments around the country, officials took to calling the shots liquid gold in a plea to prevent doses from going unused or being wasted. Now that supplies are ample and the eager are dwindling, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued new guidance. Sites should not miss an opportunity to vaccinate an individual, even if it means remaining doses in a vial will go to waste, the CDC said late Thursday. Health authorities are grappling with what level of wastage might be acceptable, given that vaccines are abundant in the U.S. but remain a scarce global resource. “There’s going to be more thrown-away doses. And that’s a real tragedy,” said Sean Valles, director of the Center for Bioethics and Social Justice at Michigan State University. “But it’s not like that dose sitting inside a CVS was going to go to India. That’s not how it works.”

view more

Journal Articles (10)

Philosophy of Population Health

Philosophy for a New Public Health Era, 1st Edition

Sean A. Valles

2018 Population health has recently grown from a series of loosely connected critiques of twentieth-century public health and medicine into a theoretical framework with a corresponding field of research—population health science. Its approach is to promote the public’s health through improving everyday human life: afford-able nutritious food, clean air, safe places where children can play, living wages, etc. It recognizes that addressing contemporary health challenges such as the prevalence of type 2 diabetes will take much more than good hospitals and public health departments.

view more

Some Comments about Being a Philosopher of Color and the Reasons I Didn’t Write a (Real) Paper for this (Seemingly) Ideal Venue for my Work

Kennedy Institute of Ethics

Sean A. Valles

2016 This special issue conspicuously lacks work by Philosophers of Color (with the exception of this commentary). I have been given this opportunity to discuss the impediments that kept me from submitting my relevant work, offered as a small step toward recognizing the impediments faced by other Philosophers of Color. I highlight factors including direct and indirect consequences of a disproportionately White community of US philosophers, and some underrecognized risk-reward calculations that Philosophers of Color face when choosing an article project. I urge further discussion of the topic, starting with an exhortation to choose the right phenomenon and accordingly frame the right question: Why are White philosophers deliberating the “ethical and social issues arising out of the 2016 US presidential election” in a prestigious journal, while Philosophers of Color are deliberating the same issues in tense classrooms, closed offices, and on-/off-campus forums?

view more

The challenges of choosing and explaining a phenomenon in epidemiological research on the “Hispanic Paradox”

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics

Sean A. Valles

2016 According to public health data, the US Hispanic population is far healthier than would be expected for a population with low socioeconomic status. Ever since Kyriakos Markides and Jeannine Coreil highlighted this in a seminal 1986 article, public health researchers have sought to explain the so-called “Hispanic paradox.” Several candidate explanations have been offered over the years, but the debate goes on. This article offers a philosophical analysis that clarifies how two sets of obstacles make it particularly difficult to explain the Hispanic paradox.

view more

Census categories for mixed race and mixed ethnicity: impacts on data collection and analysis in the US, UK and NZ

Public Health

Sean A. Valles

2015 The census mixed race/ethnicity classification systems in the US, UK and NZ are reviewed. These systems have limited success for monitoring mixed populations' health.

view more

Coupled Ethical–Epistemic Analysis of Public Health Research and Practice: Categorizing Variables to Improve Population Health and Equity

AJPH

Sean A. Valles

2014 The categorization of variables can stigmatize populations, which is ethically problematic and threatens the central purpose of public health: to improve population health and reduce health inequities. How social variables (e.g., behavioral risks for HIV) are categorized can reinforce stigma and cause unintended harms to the populations practitioners and researchers strive to serve. Although debates about the validity or ethical consequences of epidemiological variables are familiar for specific variables (e.g., ethnicity), these issues apply more widely.

view more

Heterogeneity of Risk within Racial Groups, a Challenge for Public Health Programs

Preventative Medicine

2012 Targeting high-risk populations for public health interventions is a classic tool of public health promotion programs. This practice becomes thornier when racial groups are identified as the at-risk populations. I present the particular ethical and epistemic challenges that arise when there are low-risk subpopulations within racial groups that have been identified as high-risk for a particular health concern.

view more

Should direct-to-consumer personalized genomic medicine remain unregulated?: a rebuttal of the defenses

Perspectives in Biological Medicine

2012 Direct-to-consumer personalized genomic medicine has recently grown into a small industry that sells mail-order DNA sample kits and then provides disease risk assessments, typically based upon results from genome-trait association studies.

view more

volutionary Medicine at Twenty: Rethinking Adaptationism and Disease

Biology & Philosophy

2012 Two decades ago, the eminent evolutionary biologist George C. Williams and his physician coauthor, Randolph Nesse, formulated the evolutionary medicine research program. Williams and Nesse explicitly made adaptationism a core component of the new program, which has served to undermine the program ever since, distorting its practitioners’ perceptions of evidentiary burdens and in extreme cases has served to warp practitioner’s understandings of the relationship between evolutionary benefits/detriments and medical ones.

view more

Evolutionary Medicine at Twenty: Rethinking Adaptationism and Disease

Biology & Philosophy

2011 Two decades ago, the eminent evolutionary biologist George C. Williams and his physician coauthor, Randolph Nesse, formulated the evolutionary medicine research program. Williams and Nesse explicitly made adaptationism a core component of the new program, which has served to undermine the program ever since, distorting its practitioners’ perceptions of evidentiary burdens and in extreme cases has served to warp practitioner’s understandings of the relationship between evolutionary benefits/detriments and medical ones.

view more

Lionel Penrose and the Concept of Normal Variation in Human Intelligence

Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences

Lionel Penrose (1898-1972) was an important leader during the mid-20th century decline of eugenics and the development of modern medical genetics. However, historians have paid little attention to his radical theoretical challenges to mainline eugenic concepts of mental disease.

view more