By Marcello Ienca and David Shaw. Italy and the UK arguably represent the two extremes of initial policy responses to the ongoing Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. In the following we provide an overview of these response strategies and discuss what the rest of the world can learn from these two countries. Chaotically draconian: The Italian […]
Latest articles
Don’t let the ethics of despair infect the intensive care unit
By David Shaw, Dan Harvey and Dale Gardiner. Coronavirus is a killer, and most countries have implemented measures to reduce this mortality. On the one hand, public health measures aim to limit the spread of the disease, and hence limit the number of people requiring hospitalisation; on the other, healthcare professionals working in intensive care […]
COVID-19 and the moral community: A nursing ethics perspective
By Georgina Morley. Effective triage and allocation of resources based on clinically and ethically supportable criteria is undoubtedly the correct way to respond to COVID-19 as we aim to mitigate the effects and likely unprecedented impact this novel virus will have on healthcare systems across the globe. However, as some commentators have overlooked, the burden […]
Clinical ethics in a public health crisis: supporting our clinician colleagues at the frontline
By Rosalind McDougall. Clinical ethicists around the world are responding to COVID-19 in an effort to support our clinician colleagues at the frontline. The clinical ethics community is compiling resources, developing ethical guidelines, and contributing to hospital policy as the scale of the crisis increases. The hope is that ethics can offer a structured way […]
COVID-19 pandemic
Ernest Hemingway understood courage to be “grace under pressure” and doctors, nurses and health care professionals have been profoundly courageous in the face of the Covid 19 pandemic. It is too early for philosophical or scholarly reflection upon this crisis, the priority should be to find a path through it and for those of us […]
The Moral Cost of Coronavirus
By Joshua Parker and Mikaeil Mirzaali. COVID-19 is now a global pandemic. As cases rise rapidly, one effect will be to raise deep and troubling ethical issues. If the UK follows Italy, as it is predicted to, one such ethical issue will be an extreme demand placed on healthcare resources, specifically intensive care. Indeed, given […]
Westworld, ethics and maltreating robots
By Colin Gavaghan and Mike King This week saw the return, for a third season, of the critically acclaimed HBO series Westworld. WW’s central premise in its first 2 seasons was a theme park, sometime in the near future, populated by highly realistic robots or ‘hosts’. Human guests can pay exorbitant sums to interact with […]
Having a possible escape to end life at your own timing offers reassurance and changes the perspective on current and prospective suffering
By Martijn Hagens. In a recent blog, Ben Colburn discusses that ‘the option of assisted dying is good for you even if you don’t want to die. In the paper related to that blog, he argues that “if someone knows they have a (potentially) acceptable escape, it changes the character of the choice set as a […]
Euthanasia please, we are Portuguese
By Vera Lúcia Raposo Recently, in spite of protests from conservatives and the Catholic Church, the Portuguese parliament approved five proposals aimed to allow medically assisted death (referred to as ‘anticipation of death’) at the patient’s request. The procedure requires specific conditions: patients of legal age, with incurable and fatal disease or permanent injury, and […]
Who cares for the ‘low-skilled’ care worker? The flawed new Brexit immigration policy
By David Shaw The UK Government has unveiled its post-Brexit immigration policy, unleashing an avalanche of criticism about the potential effects on the economy. The biggest change is the focus on “highly skilled” workers, and the imposition of a points system for people who wish to come and work in the UK. Economics aside, these […]