By Michael Keane. A recent, much publicized, randomized controlled trial (RCT) demonstrated that the corticosteroid, dexamethasone, reduced mortality from CoViD-19. This was hailed as a practice-changing breakthrough. The authors announced that “RECOVERY is a large, pragmatic, randomized, controlled adaptive platform trial designed to provide rapid and robust assessment of the impact of readily available potential […]
Category: Journal of Medical Ethics
Covid-19: value-based policy making
By Jonathan Michaels. While claiming to be ‘following the science’ politicians in many countries have implemented a range of widely differing policies in relation to Covid-19. This week, the UK government has reopened various parts of the economy in England, including pubs and restaurants, hairdressers and cinemas. Evidence-based decision making is not value-free. In framing […]
Finding the space for ethics during a global crisis
By Mary Hall, Deborah Mbofana, Merryn Ekberg, and Mitch Harper The concept of emergency preparedness is based on the need to act rather than plan, to be able to pick up and run with a ready prepared, detailed plan. In the UK, the Emergency Preparedness and Emergency Response and Recovery sections of The Civil Contingencies […]
Immunity passports – reopening the economy and repackaging racism
By Natalie Kofler and Françoise Baylis In the midst of worldwide protests against anti-Black racism and violent policing, private companies and governments are developing a novel platform for discrimination that would effectively increase the reach of law enforcement into public society – so called, digital “immunity passports”. It all starts with a seemingly innocuous plan […]
Lockdown of the elderly is misguided policy
By Franklin G. Miller. The Covid-19 pandemic poses policy challenges that may call for controversial measures. Savulescu and Cameron have recently argued in favor of “lockdown “of the elderly as a reasonable alternative to the population-wide lockdowns that have been implemented during the pandemic in various jurisdictions around the world. They claim correctly that such […]
Triaging ethical issues during a pandemic: a rough guide
By David Shaw Covid-19 raises dozens of fascinating ethical issues, but you might not know it from looking at the narrow focus of many ethics papers published since the pandemic began. Most of these papers have focused on the issue of allocating scare resources in intensive care units, because of the anticipated pressure on these […]
How should the risks of infecting research participants with SARS-CoV-2 be assessed?
By Susan Bull, Euzebiusz Jamrozik, Ariella Binik, Michael Parker Vaccine development processes typically take ten to twenty years. The exceptional pace of COVID-19 vaccine research has resulted in early human trials being commenced with vaccine candidates. Calls have been made to conduct controlled human infection studies (CHIs), also known as challenge studies, with SARS-CoV-2 to […]
Ethical oversight during COVID-19: rewriting the norms of research ethics review?
By Anna Chiumento and Lucy Frith One consequence of physical distancing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been the rapid suspension or adaptation of ongoing research activity. This presents an opportunity for the research ethics community and researchers to promote ethical oversight that integrates the situated and informed judgement of researchers, rebalancing away from […]
Pandemic priority decisions and triage, from good to ugly
By Hans Flaatten, Michael Beil, and Susannah Leaver. The present COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled discussions regarding the prospects and limitations of treatment in critically ill patients. This commentary describes a framework for understanding pandemic triage ranging from “business as usual” (“good”) to the extreme depletion of all resources (“ugly”). This is illustrated with different stages […]
COVID, Systemic Racism Protests, Anti-Lockdown Protests: Making Sense Of It All
By Austin Lam. A recent article highlighted an uncomfortable yet unassailable issue: “the way the public health narrative around coronavirus has reversed itself overnight seems an awful lot like … politicizing science.” Alternatively, another article frames this political element as itself the impetus to justify protests against systemic racism in the context of racism as […]