By Arthur L. Caplan and Jerrold L. Abraham. We responded to the review in JME by Monrad about ethical issues in vaccine trials, in which the discussion was limited to secondary vaccine trials (i.e. testing additional vaccines after one or more vaccines have been approved). We are concerned that the ethics of ongoing primary vaccine […]
Category: Consent
Compulsory treatment or vaccination versus quarantine
By Thomas Douglas, Jonathan Pugh and Lisa Forsberg. Governments worldwide have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic with sweeping constraints on freedom of movement, including various forms of isolation, quarantine, and ‘lockdown’. Governments have also introduced new legal instruments to guarantee the lawfulness of their measures. In the UK, the Coronavirus Act 2020 gives the government […]
Consent in the time of COVID-19
By Helen Turnham, Michael Dunn, Guy Thornburn, Elaine Hill, Dominic Wilkinson Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, one widely discussed issue has been the diversion of medical systems to support patients with acute COVID-19 disease. This diversion inevitably reduces availability of routine and urgent treatments for non-COVID-related illness. Patients with acute surgical emergencies such […]