By Bridget Williams, James Cameron, James Trauer, Ben Marais, Romain Ragonnet and Julian Savulescu. One of the major controversies of the COVID-19 pandemic has been disagreement about whether age-selective measures should be introduced, with greater focus on preventing infection in older people but tolerance of some transmission amongst younger people. Some have advocated a path […]
Category: Justice
Pandemic prioritarianism: what can we learn from Covid-19?
By Lasse Nielsen. Medical ethics have to learn from actual ethical experiences from the medical practice. The relevant interpretation and application of ethical theories must adhere to issues and questions that arise in clinical practice, and oftentimes we find that our intuitions about practical matters do not fit our theories and principles. In these cases, […]
Prioritizing justice in ventilator allocation
By L. Syd M Johnson As the Covid-19 pandemic intensified worldwide, grim reports out of Italy’s embattled and overwhelmed hospitals foretold the need to plan for rationing ventilators in the event that the number of patients requiring them exceeded the number available. Hospitals, ethics committees, and government agencies around the US began planning for the […]
The COVID19 pandemic and ethics through the eyes of women
By Pauline Capdevielle, Amaranta Manrique de Lara, María de Jesús Medina Arellano This year’s International Women’s Day was a historic occurrence in Mexico. Tens of thousands of women took to the streets on the eighth and then chose to vanish on the ninth. Each day in its own way, the so-called 8M and 9M were […]
ICU triage: How many lives or whose lives?
By Angela Ballantyne Bioethicists around the world have been asked to advise on the goals and methods of triage protocols. Estimates suggest 5% of COVID19 cases will require ICU care. The key ethical tension is between utility and equity. There are other relevant principles of fair allocation such as reciprocity for frontline workers who have […]
Dissipating historical medical inequity through decolonising healthcare education
By Amali U. Lokugamage Decolonisation is an effort to ‘turn tables’ on the enduring inequities established by colonial rule. It is also about dismantling unfair power imbalances in society. The three authors of the article ‘Decolonising ideas of healing in medical education’ originate from Sri Lanka, an ex-colonial country, but live in the UK. In […]
Disability, sexual rights and sexual duties: still puzzling after all this time?
By Ezio Di Nucci Steven J. Firth and Ivars Neiders (thanks! our little debate is ‘fun’ and, as you say, extremely important) have responded to my defense of the sexual rights puzzle according to which ‘universal positive sexual rights are incompatible with universal negative sexual rights’ by arguing that: There is a difference between ‘positive rights […]
Baselining sexual rights as health care rights
By Steven J. Firth and Ivars Neiders We would both like to thank Ezio Di Nucci for his continued involvement in the matter of sexual rights as health care rights. We cannot stress enough the importance to disabled persons of advancing this debate, and we are certain of Di Nucci’s well-meaning intentions. Moreover, we acknowledge that […]
Being, and getting, in the know
By Sara Filoche, Peter Stone, Fiona Cram, Sondra Bacharach, Anthony Dowell, Dianne Sika-Paotonu, Angela Beard, Judy Ormandy, Christina Buchanan, Michelle Thunders, and Kevin Dew Have you ever been a patient where you felt that a healthcare practitioner was merely talking at you, rather than with you? Or that your opinion (or value) didn’t count? If […]