By Yves Saint James Aquino and Nicolo Cabrera The controversy surrounding the off-label use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for COVID-19 highlights the inherent inequality of disease conditions. In this brief ethics explainer, we argue that we need to make explicit the clinical and non-clinical factors that determine the inequality of diseases. The varying appraisals of disease […]
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The vital contexts of coronavirus
By David Shaw The coronavirus pandemic has taken over all our lives, confining most people to their homes and killing tens of thousands around the world. Every day we are updated on the latest infection rates and mortality figures, and speculate about how long the lockdown will last. Yet what is missing from much of […]
Responding to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: Experiences of an ad hoc public health ethics consultation
By Verina Wild, Alena Buyx, Samia Hurst, Christian Munthe, Annette Rid, Daniel Strech, Alison Thompson. Clinical ethics consultations are a well established method to deal with ethically problematic situations in clinical care, even in emergency situations. But an emergency public health ethics consultation? This was unusual for most of us. Public health authorities in many […]
Health Care Professionals Are Under No Ethical Obligation to Treat COVID-19 Patients
By Udo Schuklenk. Even a cursory look at the news tells us that many doctors and nurses are reluctant to provide care to COVID-19 patients. Personal protective equipment (PPE) levels in Australia’s state of Queensland are very low, writes the state’s Clinical Senate Chair Alex Markwell. Bulgaria has seen a wave of doctors resigning, Zimbabwean […]
Your family or your job? Balancing the duty to treat with the duty to family in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic
By Doug McConnell At an aged-care home in Australia, most of the social care workers abstained from work after a COVID-19 outbreak at the facility. They cited concern for their family members, some of whom were immunocompromised. Physicians and nurses in the UK have threatened to quit because a lack of adequate personal protective equipment […]
Personal Protective Equipment for front-line health workers: an ethical imperative
By Elizabeth Fenton Covid-19 poses risks to health care workers that exceed those posed to members of the public. Repeated exposure to infected patients increases their risk of infection, and might also make their symptoms more severe if they become infected. Although reported numbers vary, in Italy approximately 9% of COVID-19 cases are health workers, […]
Allocating scarce biospecimens
By Leah Pierson, Sophia Gibert, and Joseph Millum Clinical researchers frequently collect samples of blood, skin, and other bodily tissues from their patient-participants and have samples left over when their research is complete. These biospecimens are often in high demand from other scientists who want them for their own research. How should such collections of […]
What can contraceptive justice teach us about coronavirus?
By Arianne Shahvisi A disease sweeps through the population, and is transmitted between people through ordinary social interaction. One group of people are particularly vulnerable, and infection has very serious consequences for them. Another group is able to transmit the disease, but has little risk of being harmed by it. Measures can be taken by […]
Scarce resources allocation in the COVID-19 outbreak: Extraordinary framework, ordinary criteria
By Chiara Mannelli. After initially emerging in China, the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has advanced rapidly. The World Health Organization has declared it a pandemic, with Europe becoming its new epicenter. Demand for critical care currently exceeds its supply, raising significant ethical concerns, among which is the allocation of scarce resources. Professionals are considering the prioritization […]
Highest German court defends the constitutional right to (assisted) suicide
By Ruth Horn. On 26th April 2020, the German Constitutional Court overturned a law of 2015 prohibiting ‘any business-like assisted suicide’. This included any potentially recurring suicide assistance that might be provided, with or without commercial interests, by a doctor, nurse, relative or member of a right-to-die organisation. Although suicide and therefore also assisted suicide […]