By Angela Ballantyne, Wendy Rogers, Vikki Entwistle, Cindy Towns In current debates about allocation of scarce ICU resources, we suggest there is undue optimism about the ‘good’ of intensive care unit (ICU) access. Most critical COVID-19 patients who receive access to a ventilator will still die. The minority who survive will likely leave with significant […]
Category: Pandemic
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 […]
Extreme altruism in a pandemic
By Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson. Altruism is one person sacrificing or risking his or her own interests for another’s interests. Humans, like other animals, have a tendency towards altruism. This is usually directed to members of their own group. An example is donating a kidney to a family member. This is quite risky – […]
Key workers have a stronger claim to compensation and hazard pay for working during the COVID-19 pandemic than the Armed Forces do when on deployment
By Doug McConnell and Dominic Wilkinson. While the general public enjoy the relative safety of social distancing, key workers are at a higher risk of both contracting COVID-19 and transmitting it to their families. This is especially the case for ‘frontline’ workers who are frequently exposed to the virus and may not have access to […]
Oops! Mistakes and moral responsibility under COVID19
By Neil Pickering I’ve been pondering for some time about the use of the term ‘mistake’ to describe one’s actions, and this has been brought to the fore again by actions of government ministers during the COVID 19 pandemic. The BBC recently reported on the case of Dr Catherine Calderwood, Scotland’s chief medical officer. Calderwood […]
Why lock down of the elderly is not ageist and why levelling down equality is wrong
By Julian Savulescu and James Cameron. Countries all around the world struggle to develop policies on how to exit the COVID-19 lockdown to restore liberty and prevent economic collapse, while also protecting public health from a resurgence of the pandemic. Hopefully, an effective vaccine or treatment will emerge, but in the meantime the strategy involves […]
The challenge of providing personalized care under COVID-19
By Ludovica De Panfilis, Silvia Tanzi and Massimo Costantini. The world continues to face the COVID-19 outbreak. It has radically affected health care organizations, care approaches, clinical and ethical choices, the perception of death and dying process, and people’s daily lives. Italy is the first and one of the most affected countries in Europe. The […]
What the virtues have to offer in the midst of COVID-19
By Julian C. Hughes. Now more than ever, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we need the virtues and the insights that virtue ethics afford us. We have all read or heard the dilemma: there is a shortage of intensive care staff or beds so that triage must take place and doctors are placed […]
COVID-19: ‘Contagion to this world’ and the demand for ethical research
By Julian C. Hughes and Julian Sheather. COVID-19 has indeed, to quote Hamlet, brought, ‘Contagion to this world’. Less than a month after it was first reported, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (NCoB) issued its report, Research in Global Health Emergencies: Ethical Issues. In its discussion of the ethical issues raised by global health emergencies, […]
Covid-19, Patents & Healthcare: The Need for A (Bio)ethics Space within Patent Law
By Aisling McMahon. Covid-19 was declared a pandemic on 12th March 2020 and by 9th April had claimed 81,580 lives. Covid-19 has also brought to stark reality broader inequalities and impediments in the delivery of healthcare, including the potential impacts of patents. Patents are intellectual property rights which allow the patent holder to stop others […]