By Michelle Bach. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the WHO named vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten threats to global health. The WHO attributes vaccine hesitancy to factors such as a lack of confidence, complacency, and convenience. In the UK, hesitancy has been associated with certain demographic factors such as race, age, and […]
Category: Public Health
Age-selective mixing to control the COVID-19 epidemic – still relevant in 2021?
James M Trauer, Ben J Marais, Romain Ragonnet, Bridget M Williams, James Cameron, Julian Savulescu. In a previous blog and now feature article in JME we explored the ethics of selective liberty restriction of the vulnerable. In that paper, we considered whether differential liberty restriction could be ethically justified. Here we consider the complementary public […]
Coffee or covid?
By Stephen John and Emma Curran. For the past year, the surprisingly popular Costa Coffee shop down the street has been either shut or takeaway only. As a result, lots of people have missed out on their regular caffeine hit. Of course, there’s a good reason for closing Costa: to stop the spread of COVID-19. […]
Lateral flow tests and schools: Why the government’s approach is ethically flawed
By Jonathan Pugh, Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu. The UK government has put lateral flow antigen tests (LFATs) at the forefront of its strategy to re-open schools. These tests can be used to detect current infections, and they can provide results quickly at the point of care. The tests themselves also have a low financial […]
You’ve got to be in it to win it: The promise and practice of vaccine lotteries
By Jane Williams, Chris Degeling, Angus Dawson, Stacy Carter Following the 2009 H1N1 pandemic there was a small explosion in the ethics literature on how to allocate scarce pandemic vaccine. There were many different suggestions about how we should distribute vaccine in an ethical way. One proposal was that a random allocation through a lottery, weighted […]
Research on COVID-19’s long term effects: Ensuring Black, Indigenous and Latinx communities are not left behind
By Michelle Medeiros, Hillary Edwards and Claudia Baquet. Possible long-term effects of COVID-19: As we continue to learn more about SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), there is emerging evidence on long-term impacts. Recent publications identified long-term effects including, but not limited to, fatigue, shortness of breath, cough, headache, chest, muscle and joint pain, fast or pounding heartbeat, loss […]
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 […]
NICE Draft Quality Standards on FASD: A misplaced focus?
By Rachel Arkell. In early March, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) launched the consultation period for the first draft of their Quality Standards on fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), which covers the assessment and diagnosis of those affected by FASD. It is, of course, vital that diagnosis and support services are […]
Finding a vaccine against the novel coronavirus: why challenge trials can be ethical even when a lot remains unknown
By Robert Steel, Lara Buchak, Nir Eyal Multiple authors believe that the development of coronavirus vaccines could be substantially accelerated through the use of challenge trials, in which participants are deliberately exposed to the virus. The tremendous loss of life and health and significant social and economic upheaval from ongoing worldwide pandemic make acceleration of […]