By Piyush Pushkar What is the NHS? “Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.” The UK government’s public health messaging from 20 March to 10 May was short and direct. The brevity suggests clarity of meaning, but that clarity begins to dissipate when one asks, “What is the NHS?” The short answer is that the […]
Category: Journal of Medical Ethics
‘How to successfully deal with a pandemic and get away with it’ – the Chinese lesson
By Vera Lúcia Raposo When COVID-19 swept through the rest of the world, everyone looked to China as a role model for how to deal with a pandemic. As a Westerner living in China, only 900 km from Wuhan, the outbreak’s epicentre, I can’t but be amazed by how China has managed to cope with […]
When Does the Cure Become Worse Than the Disease? Applying Cost-Benefit Analysis to the Covid-19 Recovery
By Derek Soled, Michelle Bayefsky and Rahul Nayak. Early in the Covid-19 outbreak in the United States, President Trump suggested that the cure – closing the American economy and sheltering at home – may be worse than the disease. Although he was criticized for focusing on the economy when so many lives were at stake, […]
Children of COVID-19: Pawns, pathfinders or partners?
By Vic Larcher and Joe Brierley. Countries throughout the world are counting the health and socio-economic costs of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the strategies necessary to contain it. Profound consequences from social isolation are beginning to emerge, and there is an urgency about charting a path to recovery, albeit to a “new normal” that mitigates […]
Autonomy under Lockdown
By Ben Colburn. In my philosophical work I mostly think about the nature and value of personal autonomy. Autonomy consists in an individual deciding for herself what is valuable, and living her life in accordance with that decision. Living an autonomous life means living a life which is valuable for you in your own eyes. […]
The UK Government’s COVID-19 legal strategy is compromising end-of-life ethics and human rights compliance
By Stephen Thomson. End-of-life ethics and the human rights of dying patients and their families are being compromised by the UK Government’s legal and communications response to COVID-19. Despite NHS England’s Visitor Guidance continuing to state that one immediate family member or carer will be permitted to visit a patient who is receiving end-of-life care, […]
Lives vs equity – analysing the dilemma in the COVID-19 response
By Neil Pickering An ethical tension that COVID-19 highlights is between saving lives and acting equitably. Bluntly, in the current circumstances, it may be that any weight given to equity will potentially cost lives. This need not always be the case, of course. The two can both be realised at one and the same time […]
The many meanings of “stay safe” in a pandemic: Sympathy, duty, and threat
By David Shaw. You’re out for a walk, your daily exercise since the pandemic began. You bump into someone you know (metaphorically speaking), exchange a few words about life under lockdown from the other side of the road, and then wish them well before setting off again. Chances are you wish them well with the […]
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 […]
How much certainty is enough? Immunity passports and COVID-19
By Rebecca brown, Julian Savulescu, Bridget Williams and Dominic Wilkinson. There is significant debate about whether or not ‘immunity passports’ are a viable tool to use in responding to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Much of this has focused on the lack of a sufficiently reliable antibody test, and uncertainty about the immune status of individuals […]