By Alberto Giubilini, Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson. Pfizer has reported preliminary results that their mRNA COVID vaccine is 90% effective during phase III trials. The hope is to have the first doses available for distribution by the end of the year. Discussion has quickly moved to how the vaccine should be distributed in the […]
Category: Pandemic
Prioritizing trust and consistency when allocating ventilators
By Alexander T.M. Cheung and Brendan Parent Rationing healthcare resources never sits well with all parties involved. By definition, someone gets left out. Various values, contrary perspectives, and practical considerations all must be weighed before reaching a morally passable, though imperfect, compromise. Yet never has the question of rationing so acutely needed answering in the […]
Ethical decision making when demand for intensive care exceeds available resources. The need for public discussion.
By Tim Cook, Kim J Gupta, Robin Fackrell, Sarah Wexler, Bernie Marden Early in the COVID-19 pandemic the first author of this blog wrote a Guardian article which was titled “ICU doctors now face the toughest decisions they will ever have to make.” It referred to the possibility – then expected to be a reality […]
Breaking bad news during the COVID-19 pandemic – a dilemma for paramedics, their patients and their loved ones
By Iain Campbell. The initial stages of the lockdown that happened in the UK in 2020 was a hectic time to be working on ambulances in London. Like many of our colleagues across the NHS, we were encountering a large number of very unwell patients. There was a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty, […]
Good health policy requires good moral philosophy
By Derek Soled. Now, more than ever, countries around the world need good health policy. While more big data and efficiency are important, better integration of the humanities embodied in moral philosophy will help achieve this goal. In policymaking decisions, ethicists deserve a place at the table as their insights into human behaviour are essential […]
Beyond the initial Covid tsunami: (re)viewing the ethical challenges in balancing public health and the ongoing health needs of individuals and their families as NHS services are reset
By Caroline Redhead. The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the NHS have been profound. The cycle of starting, suspending and restarting routine services, which will be ongoing for some time and continue alongside normal winter pressures, is in itself a major incident for the NHS. As we moved from the acute and into the […]
Have enough people died?
By Ezio Di Nucci You are probably tired of discussing COVID-19; but please bear with me because the question I want to address here is a bit unusual: not whether too many people have died because of the pandemic, but whether too few people might have actually died. No, that’s not a typo – but […]
Frauds and misconduct in scientific research: a harsh lesson from the pandemic
By Erik Boetto and Davide Golinelli. Frauds and misconduct have been common in the history of science. A well-known example is that of former-doctor A.J. Wakefield, who published a study in 1998 reporting the association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and a syndrome of autism in children. Only in 2011 was it proven that […]
How much money would it take for you to be infected with COVID-19 for research?
By Olivia Grimwade and Julian Savulescu. Controlled Human Infection Model (CHIM) research involves infecting otherwise healthy people with a disease in order to improve our knowledge of the disease and/or to test vaccine candidates. In the hope of halting the deaths, infections and lockdowns caused by the COVID 19 pandemic, CHIMs have been identified as […]
Would you enroll in this Covid-19 vaccine trial? — Ethical considerations for protecting the options of subjects in primary epidemic vaccine trials
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 […]