By Lorcan O’Byrne. As students cannot match the knowledge, skills and clinical experience of a qualified doctor, one might then contend that their involvement in the care of a patient with COVID-19 would primarily be for the students’ educational benefit, rather than for the provision of meaningful healthcare. Further, the COVID-19 pandemic is necessitating that […]
Latest articles
Discounts for doctors. Gratitude and desert in a pandemic
By Catriona Boyd and Joshua Parker. Displays of gratitude towards healthcare workers have risen throughout the pandemic. Many businesses have offered free or discounted products and services. Morrisons, for example, announced a 10% discount for all NHS workers to “support them” during the COVID-19 pandemic; and they are by no means exceptional. This isn’t limited […]
Evidence-based injustices
By Jonathan Michaels. In healthcare, and many other areas of endeavour, policy and guidance claims legitimacy on the basis that it is evidence-based and follows the best scientific advice. Expert advisory committees collect, consider and interpret extensive, and often complex, scientific evidence. As we have seen in the diverse responses to Covid-19, evidence and expertise […]
Coronavirus and lost life: three million years
By David Shaw Everyone knows that older people are at greater risk of dying if infected with coronavirus. Some have even suggested that most people dying of the virus would have died this year or next year anyway because of their age and frailty. But this is not true. In fact, the typical person who […]
Can COVID-19 re-invigorate ethics?
By Louise Campbell The COVID-19 pandemic has catapulted ethics into the spotlight. Questions previously deliberated about by small numbers of people interested in or affected by particular issues are now being posed with an unprecedented urgency right across the public domain. One of the interesting facets of this development is the way in which the […]
Setting ourselves up for failure: a pandemic of our own making
By Ezio Di Nucci The COVID-19 pandemic is of our own making – but maybe not in the way you think. Let me explain why, taking Italy as case study. COVID-19 overwhelmingly kills vulnerable people, older or chronic multi-morbidity patients: the mean age of COVID-19 fatalities in Italy according to the most recent data was […]
Can Welfare Powers of Attorney in Scotland refuse medical treatment on the granter’s behalf?
By Amanda Ward There is ambiguity to what extent Welfare Powers of Attorney (WPA) in Scotland can refuse or withhold consent to medical treatment. The primary legislation to be consulted is the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 (AWIA). A welfare power of attorney relates to decision making in relation to the granter’s personal and […]
COVID-19 and beyond: how to pay for new pharmaceuticals
By Felicitas Holzer, Thomas Pogge and Aidan Hollis. While many commentators point to the shortcomings of public health services, less attention has been paid to the chronic defects in our current pharmaceutical research system, which is similarly implicated in the disastrous effects of COVID-19. One problem is that patents, the current research rewards, do not […]
Co-producing ethics: thinking about trust
By Mark Sheehan. Our paper, ‘Trust, trustworthiness, and sharing patient data for research’ represents the outcome of a distinctive co-production method for doing applied philosophical work in bioethics. The paper is jointly authored by eight members of the public and two academic bioethicists (both with a background in philosophy) and emerges from a novel approach […]
Is it wrong to prioritise health workers or public figures during Covid-19?
Alaa Daoud and Ezio Di Nucci. Over 100 health workers have died because of Covid-19 in the UK alone. Sixty-one and counting medical doctors (not including other health workers) have died in Italy in March 2020 alone from Covid-19, and 1 in 6 hospitalized Covid-19 patients was a health worker. Health workers are justifiably concerned […]