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Covid-19 Ethics Resource Center

Bioethics Forum Essay
vaccine being injected into toddler's arm

Covid is Surging. Most Young Children Are Still Unvaccinated

Children are returning to classrooms amid another wave of Covid cases, but some public health leaders have leaned into the message that “most of us” can ignore the continued presence of Covid by taking just “a few basic steps,” such as staying up to date with vaccinations. “Most of us,” however, does not include families with young babies, among other groups for whom these steps are unavailable or insufficient.
Read Covid is Surging. Most Young Children Are Still Unvaccinated
Bioethics Forum Essay

We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us

In its early days, bioethics emphasized patient autonomy in the doctor-patient relationship. But patient autonomy is not the be-all and end-all principle to follow in all health care settings. Especially in lethal, airborne infectious disease pandemics.
Read We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us
Bioethics Forum Essay
people with suitcases traveling in China

A Warning from China: After the Zero Covid Policy

A massive wave of Covid infections has begun now that China has ended much of its zero Covid policy. Three steps ought to be taken.
Read A Warning from China: After the Zero Covid Policy
Bioethics Forum Essay

Moving On from Covid? Immunocompromised People Can’t

The best case scenario for immunocompromised people like me would be universal masking in all public spaces. But I am willing to compromise.
Read Moving On from Covid? Immunocompromised People Can’t
Bioethics Forum Essay
https://www.thehastingscenter.org/the-cdcs-misguided-medical-masking-policy/

The CDC’s Misguided Medical Masking Policy

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s revised guidelines have done away with universal masking at health care facilities, making masking optional if community Covid transmission isn’t high. It’s the latest attempt of public health officials to adapt their guidance to meet the country’s fatigued sensibilities. Some patients will be at risk.
Read The CDC’s Misguided Medical Masking Policy
Bioethics Forum Essay

How Many Covid-19 Deaths Should We Accept?

President Biden recently declared that the Covid-19 “pandemic is over.”  Some public health experts agreed with this assessment; others disagreed.  What cannot be disputed is that nearly 12,000 Americans have...
Read How Many Covid-19 Deaths Should We Accept?
Bioethics Forum Essay
four young children wearing backpacks and walking hand in hand with a woman

Back to School: The Covid Vaccination Choice

It’s back-to-school season in the United States, the third one during the Covid pandemic, but the first in which all schoolchildren are eligible for Covid vaccines. Yet fewer than a third of children ages 5 to 11 are fully vaccinated, while the percentage of those under 5 who have started–let alone completed–vaccination is in the low single digits. Why? The answers are complicated.
Read Back to School: The Covid Vaccination Choice
Bioethics Forum Essay
woman of color holding a yellow sign with the words "thoughts" and "prayers" crossed out, and the word "action" is circled in red marker

Treating Gun Violence as a Public Health Threat: Not Exactly What We Meant

This week, the United States saw two momentous public health events: one million deaths attributed to Covid and the 198th mass shooting of the year. Both the pandemic and gun shootings are threats to public health that are not being adequately addressed.
Read Treating Gun Violence as a Public Health Threat: Not Exactly What We Meant
Bioethics Forum Essay
large crowd of protesters, one very large black sign stating "Covid-19 death rate in kids ages 0-10 is 0.0021%" in white lettering

California U-Turn on Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren

The California legislature appears to have caved to pressure from opponents of a Covid vaccine mandate for schoolkids. I’d prefer to think of it as a wise and strategic retreat from a battle that mandate advocates could not win.
Read California U-Turn on Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren
Bioethics Forum Essay

Masks, Values, and a Lesson for Democracy?

As mask mandates are rolled back and friends and neighbors debate the risks and benefits of masks and the merits or permissibility of mandating their use, we can catch a glimpse of the considerable extent to which values depend heavily on something other than pure reason. It’s a bit disappointing, perhaps. But it might be a useful lesson for democracy.
Read Masks, Values, and a Lesson for Democracy?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Resilience and the Twin Medical Catastrophes of War and Pandemic

As I sit here in my office at the Slovak Medical University in Bratislava, my colleagues are experiencing great moral anguish because of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. Simultaneously, we are also confronting the Omicron wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. The war complicates and burdens health care here and in other border nations exponentially, and especially so in combination with the pandemic.
Read Resilience and the Twin Medical Catastrophes of War and Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay
older woman laying in a bed with a younger woman holding her hand

I Was Never “Just” a Visitor

Caregivers are not visitors. Hospital policies that restrict visits from family caregivers can harm patients.
Read I Was Never “Just” a Visitor
Bioethics Forum Essay

Global Health Justice: Now Is the Time

The recognition of the social injustices surrounding the pandemic is an important opportunity to understand the longstanding links between health and social and global justice.
Read Global Health Justice: Now Is the Time
Bioethics Forum Essay

Overcoming Covid Vaccine Hesitancy Among Minnesota’s Somali Muslims

When Covid-19 vaccines first became available last year, Somali Muslims in Minnesota--the largest Somali Muslim population in North America-- were fearful and, consequently, their vaccination rate was low and their Covid-19 rate was high. But health professionals and community representatives worked together to understand and overcome their vaccine hesitancy.
Read Overcoming Covid Vaccine Hesitancy Among Minnesota’s Somali Muslims
Bioethics Forum Essay

Another Pragmatic Public Health Decision

There has been much criticism of the decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to let Covid-infected people who are feeling better to stop quarantining after five days and simply wear a mask. But this sort of pragmatic decision has a long history in public health.
Read Another Pragmatic Public Health Decision
Bioethics Forum Essay

With Pediatric Hospitalizations Rising, Reconsider Off-Label Covid Vaccination for Young Children

Pfizer recently announced that its trials in children 2 to 5 years old produced a weaker than expected antibody response and that it would hold off requesting authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. This news creates opportunities – and additional challenges – for off-label use of Covid-19 vaccines in children,
Read With Pediatric Hospitalizations Rising, Reconsider Off-Label Covid Vaccination for Young Children
Bioethics Forum Essay

Should Clinicians Ask Hospitalized Covid Patients Why They Aren’t Vaccinated?

The role of doctors, nurses and other clinicians is to treat patients without passing judgment and to fulfill their fiduciary duty. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has muddled these obligations.
Read Should Clinicians Ask Hospitalized Covid Patients Why They Aren’t Vaccinated?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Vaccination Discrimination Goes Against Nursing Ethics

Some health care providers are prioritizing patients who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 over those who are unvaccinated. This is unethical.
Read Vaccination Discrimination Goes Against Nursing Ethics
Bioethics Forum Essay

Studying Covid Vaccines in the Youngest Kids

Children have suffered both physical and mental illness during the pandemic. Nearly 200 children in the United States have died. Acute mental health crises increased during the pandemic. Getting children immunized is the best way to get back to normal. We suggest an option that would permit children under 5 to be vaccinated without waiting until traditional prospective randomized trials can be completed.
Read Studying Covid Vaccines in the Youngest Kids
Bioethics Forum Essay

Omicron, the Legacy of Renée Fox, and the Uncertain Practice of Medicine

Like the pandemic, uncertainty, growing confidence, and the return of doubt come in waves. The Omicron variant is just the latest twist in this plot.
Read Omicron, the Legacy of Renée Fox, and the Uncertain Practice of Medicine
Bioethics Forum Essay

Pathogens and Humans

In a 1988 essay on pandemics, Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg wrote, “We have no guarantee that the natural evolutionary competition of viruses with the human species will always find ourselves the winner.”
Read Pathogens and Humans
Bioethics Forum Essay

Is It Ethical to Prohibit Off-Label Use of Covid-19 Vaccines in Kids?

In a new essay in the Hastings Center Report, we argue it is not. Yet the practice is prohibited.
Read Is It Ethical to Prohibit Off-Label Use of Covid-19 Vaccines in Kids?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Vaccine Mandates for Kids: It’s Not Whether, But When

States and school boards around the country are engaged in a debate about whether to require middle and high school students to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19. The debate is not so much about whether to mandate. It's when to do so.
Read Vaccine Mandates for Kids: It’s Not Whether, But When
Bioethics Forum Essay

What Warrants Religious Exemption from Covid Vaccine Mandates?

Faced with mandatory Covid vaccination, students and employees have appealed to religion as grounds for exemption. This latest conscience war within our culture wars presents a minefield of legal and philosophical complexities for states and health care systems.
Read What Warrants Religious Exemption from Covid Vaccine Mandates?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Who Will Be There to Care If There Are No More Nurses?

The pandemic has laid bare the significant shortcomings of a health system rooted in an unsustainable financial model that exploits the physical and emotional labor of its nurses.
Read Who Will Be There to Care If There Are No More Nurses?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Capitalist Philanthropy and Vaccine Imperialism

The commitments made by the wealthiest countries to share Covid vaccines and funding for international cooperation mechanisms are crucial, but insufficient. They reflect the “securitization of health,” a 21st century phenomenon whereby states turn health issues into national security issues.
Read Capitalist Philanthropy and Vaccine Imperialism
Bioethics Forum Essay

Public Reason, Public Schools, and Mask Mandates

In South Carolina, where I live, we are not just ignoring good arguments, but actually legislating on the basis of bad ones. The budget rule, Proviso 1.108, threatens the funding of schools that require masks.
Read Public Reason, Public Schools, and Mask Mandates
Bioethics Forum Essay

Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself: Building Community During Covid

The opposition to mask and vaccine mandates transcends the issue of individual liberty.
Read Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself: Building Community During Covid
Bioethics Forum Essay

Should Covid Vaccination Status Be Used to Make Triage Decisions?

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to strain health systems’ capacity to provide adequate care for critically ill patients, should patients’ vaccination status be considered in making triage decisions? This question sparked debate recently after the leak of an internal memo of the North Texas Mass Critical Care Guideline Task Force that proposed using patients’ Covid-19 vaccination status as a factor to assign intensive care beds.
Read Should Covid Vaccination Status Be Used to Make Triage Decisions?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Fear of Doing Too Much Too Soon or Too Little Too Late: Research on Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly affected the practice of clinical research. Researchers and IRBs have felt an urgency to respond more quickly than usual, aware that lives are at stake.
Read Fear of Doing Too Much Too Soon or Too Little Too Late: Research on Covid-19
Bioethics Forum Essay

Parents, Covid, and Trauma-Informed Choices

As the parent of a child under 5 years old, I am worried about what lies ahead for kids and Covid-19. The more contagious Delta variant is widely circulating, infecting...
Read Parents, Covid, and Trauma-Informed Choices
Bioethics Forum Essay

The FDA and the Moral Distinction Between Killing and Letting Die

Why is the FDA dragging its feet in approving Covid vaccines for children under 12? Justifications lack moral weight.
Read The FDA and the Moral Distinction Between Killing and Letting Die
Bioethics Forum Essay

Vaccine Mandates for Health Care Workers Raise Several Ethical Dilemmas

The moral justification for mandating covid vaccination for health care workers is clear. But what happens if some health care workers still refuse to be vaccinated, and there aren't enough vaccinated staff to care for all the patients in a hospital?
Read Vaccine Mandates for Health Care Workers Raise Several Ethical Dilemmas
Bioethics Forum Essay

A Student’s Perspective: Universities Must Require Vaccination

Colleges and universities have an ethical obligation to mandate covid vaccines to protect the health and futures of both their students and the larger communities, in addition to promoting equality through education.
Read A Student’s Perspective: Universities Must Require Vaccination
Bioethics Forum Essay

Covid Doesn’t Justify Cutting Corners on Medical Interpretation

Many hospitals are providing incomplete or subpar professional medical interpretation to the patients who need it--many of whom are disproportionately affected by Covid.
Read Covid Doesn’t Justify Cutting Corners on Medical Interpretation
Bioethics Forum Essay

Quality of Life? Suffering? Covid-19 Intensifies Challenges in Discussing Life-Sustaining Treatment

The pandemic magnified the inherent difficulty and stress of conversations involving life-sustaining treatment by forcing clinicians and patients to engage in life-altering discussions via telephone and video conference, restricting nonverbal communication and eye contact, and eliminating the benefit of simply having another person nearby in time of crisis.
Read Quality of Life? Suffering? Covid-19 Intensifies Challenges in Discussing Life-Sustaining Treatment
Bioethics Forum Essay

Rugged American Individualism is a Myth, and It’s Killing Us

The American myth of rugged individualism, which often means “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps,” is outdated, was never completely accurate. It is on full display during the coronavirus pandemic, contributing to cases and deaths.
Read Rugged American Individualism is a Myth, and It’s Killing Us
Bioethics Forum Essay

Covid Vaccine Patent Waivers are for Health Sovereignty

The United States, Russia, and China support temporary patent waivers for Covid vaccines. The waivers, which need support from other countries, would likely save lives in low- and middle-income countries.
Read Covid Vaccine Patent Waivers are for Health Sovereignty
Bioethics Forum Essay

Instead of Vaccine Passports, Let’s Push for Global Justice in Vaccine Access

In Costa Rica, where I live, only 24% of the population has received at least one vaccine dose because we have received very small amounts of vaccines. The Costa Rican president suggested that every person who can travel to the U.S. to get the jab, should do it. Vaccine tourism, then, seems to be another promising business opportunity for the powerful countries that have accumulated vaccines instead of redistributing them soon and fairly.
Read Instead of Vaccine Passports, Let’s Push for Global Justice in Vaccine Access
Bioethics Forum Essay

Covid-19 in Argentina and the Abuse of Bioethics

Many Latin American countries are being devastated by excessive loss of life from Covid-19, many sectors of society falling below the poverty line, and health systems being overwhelmed. As collateral damage, some countries in the region are witnessing an eruption of populism and autocratic trends and an increasing erosion of already weak and unstable democracies. Can bioethics be a useful tool for managing this crisis? Argentina provides a case study.
Read Covid-19 in Argentina and the Abuse of Bioethics
Bioethics Forum Essay
crowded restaurant interior

C.D.C.’s Latest Mask Guidance: Science, Politics, and Public Health

The C.D.C.'s latest policy guidance that people who have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus virus no longer need to wear face masks indoors gets the science right, but policymaking wrong.
Read C.D.C.’s Latest Mask Guidance: Science, Politics, and Public Health
Bioethics Forum Essay

Nope. A Covid-19 Travel Pass isn’t Just like the Yellow Card.

Citing the Yellow Card as precedent for Covid-19 travel passes that exempt those with proof of vaccination from testing and quarantine mandates when crossing certain borders is an erroneous policy assumption that could prolong the pandemic and imperil global health.
Read Nope. A Covid-19 Travel Pass isn’t Just like the Yellow Card.
Bioethics Forum Essay

Should We Enroll Our Child in a Covid-19 Vaccine Trial?

My partner and I are thinking a lot about this question. Moderna and Pfizer trials are running in our community–at the children’s hospital where I work as a clinical ethicist....
Read Should We Enroll Our Child in a Covid-19 Vaccine Trial?
Bioethics Forum Essay

After the Anniversary of Covid, Reckoning with Many New Normals

Anniversaries are complicated. In rehabilitation psychology, the anniversary of an accident that caused a brain or spinal cord injury can be a time for profound gratitude and for grief. Now that we have passed the one-year anniversary of the Covid pandemic, each of us continues to deal with the repercussions and wondering what the "new normal" may look like.
Read After the Anniversary of Covid, Reckoning with Many New Normals
Bioethics Forum Essay

Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Rural Communities? Checking Our Assumptions

As access to vaccines increases, the popular press reports waning demand for vaccines in rural residents and points to vaccine hesitancy. But there may be other reasons why doses distributed to rural areas remain unclaimed.
Read Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Rural Communities? Checking Our Assumptions
Bioethics Forum Essay

Exhortations to Trust Biomedical Experts: What’s Missing?

Disagreements among biomedical experts regarding whether the scientific evidence supports delaying the second shot of Covid-19 vaccines or pausing the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines because of very rare side effects bring to the fore missing aspects in exhortations to trust biomedical experts.
Read Exhortations to Trust Biomedical Experts: What’s Missing?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Vaccinated and Still Isolated: The Ethics of Overprotecting Nursing Home Residents

The pandemic is not over, but light is beginning to crest the horizon. Vaccination rates, especially among older adults and their caregivers, are rising. As we begin to relax physical...
Read Vaccinated and Still Isolated: The Ethics of Overprotecting Nursing Home Residents
Bioethics Forum Essay

WHO-China Report on Covid: Important Step Forward, More to Be Done

The World Health Organization recently released a long-anticipated report on SARS-CoV-2 origins, based on 28 days of field research and site visits in China conducted jointly by 17 international and...
Read WHO-China Report on Covid: Important Step Forward, More to Be Done
Bioethics Forum Essay

Too Taboo to Contemplate? Refusing Covid Vaccination for Some People with Dementia

There are a whole lot of us who think that, if we had dementia and were unable to live independently, we would prefer death. The idea that someone suffering from dementia and confined to a nursing home might actually welcome death is apparently so taboo that it cannot be openly contemplated.
Read Too Taboo to Contemplate? Refusing Covid Vaccination for Some People with Dementia
Bioethics Forum Essay

A Doctor Confronts the Burden of Judgment during the Pandemic

Is it wrong for doctors to judge their patients’ choices? I have reflected on this question while being on the frontline of the Covid-19 pandemic in New York City. Health...
Read A Doctor Confronts the Burden of Judgment during the Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay

Surrogate Decision-Making for Incarcerated Patients: A Pandemic-Inspired Call to Action

As Covid-19 continues to plague the United States, insufficient attention has been paid to the role that incarcerated persons play in the persistence of this pandemic and the work that...
Read Surrogate Decision-Making for Incarcerated Patients: A Pandemic-Inspired Call to Action
Bioethics Forum Essay

Making Vaccine Appointments Is Tearing Us Apart

The Covid-19 vaccine rollout is currently a hub of individual, sociopolitical, and ethical activity.  As we watch the numbers of daily doses administered rising, we may feel engaged in a...
Read Making Vaccine Appointments Is Tearing Us Apart
Bioethics Forum Essay

How to Make It Right: Covid Reparations

Reparations in various forms of compensation to the American victims of preventable Covid, who may experience lifelong health effects, is obligatory.
Read How to Make It Right: Covid Reparations
Bioethics Forum Essay

Covid-19 Vaccination Certificates: Prospects and Problems

Now, with limited distribution of vaccines with varying degrees of efficacy there is renewed interest in immunity passports; more accurately described as vaccination certificates. What remains to be determined is who may use this documentation for what purpose.
Read Covid-19 Vaccination Certificates: Prospects and Problems
Bioethics Forum Essay

Undocumented Immigrants and Covid-19 Vaccination

Willingness to be vaccinated is not the only factor that may reduce vaccination rates. Fear is a powerful deterrent for individuals in hidden populations, especially undocumented immigrants. Even if their work or other circumstances place them at high risk of infection, many would be unlikely to risk the consequences of coming forward to be vaccinated.
Read Undocumented Immigrants and Covid-19 Vaccination
Bioethics Forum Essay

Working Around the System: Vaccine Navigators and Vaccine Equity

Vaccine navigators have emerged as a response to the complexity of mass vaccination for Covid-19.
Read Working Around the System: Vaccine Navigators and Vaccine Equity
Bioethics Forum Essay
magnification of the Coronavirus

Why We Need a Covid-19 Commission

Congress recently announced plans for an independent commission to investigate the facts and causes of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. This 1/6 Commission is to be modelled after the 9/11 Commission. A national commission to investigate the disaster that the Covid-19 virus has caused in America must also be launched.
Read Why We Need a Covid-19 Commission
Bioethics Forum Essay

Vaccine Hesitancy Is No Excuse for Systemic Racism

Fewer vaccines are going to Black people. While it’s easy to fall back on vaccine hesitancy as an excuse, systemic racism is to blame.
Read Vaccine Hesitancy Is No Excuse for Systemic Racism
Bioethics Forum Essay

Science in the Biden White House: Eric Lander, Alondra Nelson, and the Legacy of Lewis Thomas

Science has replaced populism in the White House. For the first time, the president's science advisor will be elevated to cabinet rank. There are other good omens, as well.
Read Science in the Biden White House: Eric Lander, Alondra Nelson, and the Legacy of Lewis Thomas
Bioethics Forum Essay

Islamic Ethics, Covid-19 Vaccination, and the Concept of Harm

Vaccine hesitancy is a concern around the world, but negative attitudes among Muslims in particular toward some coronavirus vaccines have been the focus of attention in the media. Some scholars in Asia recently issued fatwa against the Chinese Covid-19 vaccine. Media coverage has characterized the Muslim world as a hotspot for vaccine hesitancy, but experts point out biases in this coverage and explain the underlying reasons.
Read Islamic Ethics, Covid-19 Vaccination, and the Concept of Harm
Bioethics Forum Essay

Should Covid Vaccination Schedules Deviate from the Status Quo–as a Last Resort?

Last month, with concerns over the supply and coordinated administration of coronavirus vaccines escalating, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conceded that “any available mRNA COVID-19 vaccine” may be used to complete vaccination in “exceptional situations” preventing multi-dose manufacturer matching. While presented solely as a last resort, this guidance reflects a dilemma currently sweeping across the medical and health policy worlds: given limited supply, should vaccination efforts—still only authorized for emergency use in this country—deviate from evidence-driven, studied regimens to maximize individuals reached?
Read Should Covid Vaccination Schedules Deviate from the Status Quo–as a Last Resort?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Efficacy is Relative in a Public Health Crisis: Evaluating the Next Wave of Covid-19 Vaccines

A third Covid vaccine candidate moving closer to potential FDA authorization is less effective than the two Covid vaccines already authorized in the United States. Is it ethical to offer a vaccine with lower efficacy? Is it ethical not to offer it in a public health emergency?
Read Efficacy is Relative in a Public Health Crisis: Evaluating the Next Wave of Covid-19 Vaccines
Bioethics Forum Essay

Ethics Supports Seeking Population Immunity, Not Immunizing Priority Groups

Vaccine allocation guidelines that prioritize people at greatest risk of Covid-19 require considerable administrative work (sometimes taking weeks). This is creating a bottleneck that has resulted in doses stuck in freezers not in arms. There's a better, more ethical way to allocate vaccines.
Read Ethics Supports Seeking Population Immunity, Not Immunizing Priority Groups
Bioethics Forum Essay
frozen embryos

Surprising Surge of Egg Freezing during the Pandemic Raises Ethical Questions

Contrary to the expectations of many fertility clinics, demand for egg freezing has increased sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting longstanding ethical concerns about egg freezing clinics.
Read Surprising Surge of Egg Freezing during the Pandemic Raises Ethical Questions
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Bioethics of Built Health Care Spaces

Around the world, an alarming percentage of Covid-19 deaths occurred in long-term care facilities. Some of these deaths may have been avoided by changes in design. It's time that bioethicists to take a closer look at the built health care environment.
Read The Bioethics of Built Health Care Spaces
Bioethics Forum Essay

Masks Are Not Created Equal

Finally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working on developing standards for masks to see which ones actually block viruses. In the meantime, though, we should all be acting on what we do know about the effectiveness of various masks against Covid.
Read Masks Are Not Created Equal
Bioethics Forum Essay

Ashamed to Be Vaccinated? The Ethics of Health Care Employees Forgoing Unfair Priority

Suppose you are young, healthy, employed in a health care system and that your line of work does not require leaving the low-risk comfort of your home. Now suppose that your employer offers you a vaccine. You know there are others in your community who are at greater risk of contracting and dying from Covid-19 than you. Should you accept the dose?
Read Ashamed to Be Vaccinated? The Ethics of Health Care Employees Forgoing Unfair Priority
Bioethics Forum Essay
spherical white virus with red pyramid stuck around it

Coronavirus Mutation Panic

The headlines are terrifying: A highly contagious new variant of the coronavirus is circulating in England. As the story spread, politicians and media outlets reported a devastating statistic: the new strain is 70% more transmissible than other strains of the virus. This has led to new lockdowns; many border closures; flight cancellations; and people fleeing the U.K. by train, boat, and plane. But is any of this necessary? Is the world suffering from mutation panic?
Read Coronavirus Mutation Panic
Bioethics Forum Essay
Young patient in a medical face mask getting an antiviral vaccine at the hospital

Prioritizing the “1a”: Ethically Allocating Scarce Covid Vaccines to Health Care Workers

Beginning this week, guarded vehicles loaded with the first Covid-19 vaccine authorized in the United States are fanning out to hospitals across the country. In vaccine prioritization protocols health care workers, along with nursing home residents, make up phase “1a” – those who are first in line to be vaccinated. While much attention has been paid to who should come next, less is known about how hospitals are allocating vaccine doses among their staff. For many medical centers, the first shipments will only be enough to vaccinate a fraction of their workers. Who goes first within the “1a” category, and how are such decisions made?
Read Prioritizing the “1a”: Ethically Allocating Scarce Covid Vaccines to Health Care Workers
Bioethics Forum Essay
Glass bottles in production in the tray of an automatic liquid dispenser, a line for filling medicines against bacteria and viruses, antibiotics and vaccines

Global Allocation of Coronavirus Vaccines

A Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech has received emergency authorization in the United States and has been authorized in the countries, and a vaccine by Moderna is likely to be authorized soon. In spite of this good news, at least for the first couple of years, Covid-19 vaccines will be a scarce resource. Because low-income countries are likely to lose out in the scramble to get access to them, there have been calls for global solidarity. While equitable allocation of vaccines around the world would be ideal, it is unrealistic as a near-term goal.
Read Global Allocation of Coronavirus Vaccines
Bioethics Forum Essay
man of color holding a white sign stating "end the pandemic of white supremacy"

Bioethics, Nazi Analogies, and the Coronavirus Pandemic

The year 2020 will be remembered as the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. But the pandemic was not alone in creating fear and dismay and raising ethical questions. Think of the rise in antisemitism, police violence against Black people, protests against immigration, and rallies by groups espousing Nazi slogans and symbols. Hate crimes, including murder, are the highest in years, according to the most recent FBI report, and were particularly aimed at Jews and Hispanics. Asian-Americans have been targeted as carriers of the so-called “China virus.”
Read Bioethics, Nazi Analogies, and the Coronavirus Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay
white man holding a white sign stating in red lettering "I will never wear a face muzzle, I will never take the vaccine"

Resisting Public Health Measures, Then and Now

One of the most surprising aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic for those of us who teach the history of public health is how unwilling many Americans have been to adopt health measures to protect others. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, tens of millions of Americans traveled, despite the fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged them to stay home and the overall death rate from the coronavirus is approaching 300,000. Should recent events make us revisit aspects of the history of public health? And how can these stories inform future public health efforts during pandemics?
Read Resisting Public Health Measures, Then and Now
Bioethics Forum Essay
clear plastic medical bag with yellow liquid, laying horizontally

Human Plasma and Bioethics Nationalism

The procurement of human plasma as a potential therapy for Covid-19 is one of the latest examples of bioethics nationalism, defined by Jonathan Moreno in this blog as “distinct bioethics standards [which] are formally proclaimed as a matter of right by a sovereign state.” The race for a Covid cure pushes at the weak seams in the international liberal order in much the same way that Covid appears to be pushing at health care systems.
Read Human Plasma and Bioethics Nationalism
Bioethics Forum Essay
white sign in the ground with the letters FDA in blue

Ethics of Emergency Use Authorization During the Pandemic

The Food and Drug Administration's rigorous guidance for an emergency use authorization of a Covid vaccine was met by resistance from the White House, since some of the terms would make it virtually impossible to issue a vaccine-related emergency authorization before Election Day. Understanding the ethical dimensions of issuing it for a vaccine can provide clarity on the necessity of the FDA’s stringent guidelines.
Read Ethics of Emergency Use Authorization During the Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay
gloved hands injecting a vaccine into an exposed shoulder

Ethics of Placebo Controls in Coronavirus Vaccine Trials

Multiple candidate vaccines for coronavirus are being evaluated scientifically in a process of unprecedented speed, and thousands of individuals around the world have volunteered to participate in placebo-controlled phase III field trials. If, or when, one of these candidate vaccines is proved to be safe and effective and receives an emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, will it continue to be ethical to enroll participants in other coronavirus trials that randomize half of them to a placebo?
Read Ethics of Placebo Controls in Coronavirus Vaccine Trials
Bioethics Forum Essay
gloved hands holding each other

Amid the Pandemic and Racial Injustice, Greater Empathy in Medical School

Empathy does not need to dissipate as we endure medical training. Both the pandemic and the national reckoning over racial injustice and police brutality have touched every aspect of life as we know it, and medical training and education have been no exception.
Read Amid the Pandemic and Racial Injustice, Greater Empathy in Medical School
COVID-19
A woman Sneezing

Could the Common Cold Help Stop Covid-19? We Need to Know–Now.

In an essay published in Scientific American, we call for immediate and intensive research into the possibility that exposure to one of the coronaviruses that cause the common cold could decrease the severity of Covid-19, and could be leveraged to expand what’s been called “pre-existing” immunity to the disease by deliberate transmission of common cold coronaviruses. Here, we expand on our proposal.
Read Could the Common Cold Help Stop Covid-19? We Need to Know–Now.
Bioethics Forum Essay
Krishna and Balarama ancient carving, Angkor

Volunteering for a Covid Vaccine Trial: Fulfilling Hindu Obligations or Fostering Pharmaceutical Company Profits?

Volunteering for a Covid-19 vaccine trial satisfied my altruistic goals and harmonizes with my Hindu beliefs. But I am troubled that a drug company is going to profit from my altruism and my religious obligations.
Read Volunteering for a Covid Vaccine Trial: Fulfilling Hindu Obligations or Fostering Pharmaceutical Company Profits?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Living through the Pandemic in New Zealand

In New Zealand we have been saved from the worst devastations of Covid-19 by a firm government, courage and care for one another, and our geographic “moat.” With the recent minor surge of cases, our government has, once again, encouraged us to respond as a team of 5 million. We have been guided by the slogan “Be kind.”
Read Living through the Pandemic in New Zealand
Bioethics Forum Essay

Fair Compensation for Rare Vaccine Harms

As multiple Covid vaccine candidates enter clinical trials and hopefully move closer to approval, one important unanswered question is how to compensate the rare cases of serious vaccine harm.
Read Fair Compensation for Rare Vaccine Harms
Bioethics Forum Essay

We Can’t Forget the Nation’s Other Epidemic

Covid isn’t merely overshadowing the drug overdose crisis—it’s directly worsening it.
Read We Can’t Forget the Nation’s Other Epidemic
Bioethics Forum Essay

Are Physicians Hypocrites for Supporting Black Lives Matter Protests and Opposing Anti-Lockdown Protests? An Ethical Analysis

Physicians have been vocal in condemning the anti-lockdown protests while endorsing and even participating in the Black Lives Matter protests. This has led to criticism of the medical community for being inconsistent and hypocritical. What does an ethical analysis reveal?
Read Are Physicians Hypocrites for Supporting Black Lives Matter Protests and Opposing Anti-Lockdown Protests? An Ethical Analysis
Bioethics Forum Essay

Covid-19 and Deafness: Why the Protocols Fall Short

I am hard-of-hearing; I wear two hearing aids, and Covid-19 has made all forms of human interaction extraordinarily difficult.
Read Covid-19 and Deafness: Why the Protocols Fall Short
Bioethics Forum Essay

Did Russia’s Most Influential Bioethicist Get a Coronavirus Vaccine?

Along with the announcement that his government had approved Sputnik V, the supposed Russian coronavirus vaccine, Vladimir Putin also indulged in a moment of paternal pride: Wanting to confirm his personal confidence in the vaccine, he mentioned that one of his daughters was among the early recipients. This raises a couple of intriguing questions: Which daughter was it? And why does it matter?
Read Did Russia’s Most Influential Bioethicist Get a Coronavirus Vaccine?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Hacking Ventilators in a Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to test and occasionally overwhelm health care institutions. Many practitioners may face the ethically challenging scenario of having to ration ventilators while triaging patients in “crisis care.” Ventilator shortages have led to innovative ventilator design “hacks.” Are these improvised ventilators ethical?
Read Hacking Ventilators in a Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay

Is the Coronavirus Pandemic Accelerating Bioethics Nationalism?

The global crisis created by the coronavirus pandemic and the rush to create and distribute a vaccine widely hoped to be a “silver bullet” that can facilitate a return to “normalcy” threatens to upend seven decades of assumptions about bioethical norms.
Read Is the Coronavirus Pandemic Accelerating Bioethics Nationalism?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Against Personal Ventilator Reallocation

Personal ventilators used by people with disabilities should not reallocated to people with Covid-19. Triage protocols should be immediately clarified and explicitly state that personal ventilators will be protected in all cases.
Read Against Personal Ventilator Reallocation
Bioethics Forum Essay

Lawsuits of Last Resort: Employees Fight for Safe Workplaces during Covid-19

As more workplaces open up, a seldom-used legal action is being taken against employers charged with inadequately protecting employees from the coronavirus: public nuisance lawsuits.
Read Lawsuits of Last Resort: Employees Fight for Safe Workplaces during Covid-19
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Americans with Disabilities Act at 30: A Cause for Celebration During Covid-19?

A central mandate of the ADA is to make the goods of society accessible to people with disabilities and overcome their segregation in civil society through reasonable accommodation that allows them to go to work, live with their neighbors, and avoid institutionalization. But let’s not delude ourselves with historic sentimentality as disability law is placed under tremendous stress by the pandemic.
Read The Americans with Disabilities Act at 30: A Cause for Celebration During Covid-19?
Bioethics Forum Essay

On Being a Foster Parent During Covid

I knew that being a foster parent would be demanding, but I was unprepared for the extent of the challenges, which were exacerbated by the pandemic.
Read On Being a Foster Parent During Covid
Bioethics Forum Essay

Pandemic Language

Read Pandemic Language
Bioethics Forum Essay

Before We Turn to Digital Contact Tracing for Covid, Remember Surveillance in the Sixties

Is it unrealistic to believe that phone apps for digital Covid contact tracing can be designed and regulated in ways that prevent the information they collect from being misused? It's worth remembering surveillance of Vietnam War protesters and Martin Luther King Jr.
Read Before We Turn to Digital Contact Tracing for Covid, Remember Surveillance in the Sixties
Bioethics Forum Essay

Covid-19 Makes Clear that Bioethics Must Confront Health Disparities

With some reluctance, I’ve come to the sad realization the COVID-19 pandemic has been a stress test for bioethics, a field of study that intersects medicine, law, the humanities and the social sciences. As both a physician and medical ethicist, I arrived at this conclusion after spending months at what was once the epicenter of the pandemic: New York City. I was overseeing a 24/7 bioethics consultation service.
Read Covid-19 Makes Clear that Bioethics Must Confront Health Disparities
Bioethics Forum Essay
young african american woman looking out a window in distress

Using the Pandemic as an Excuse to Limit Abortion

Several states, including Ohio, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Iowa, and Oklahoma, declared abortion a nonessential service at some point during the pandemic, meaning that it was effectively banned until the crisis passed. Supporters of the policies maintain that abortion is an elective procedure whose medical resources are better off used in the fight against the pandemic. But abortion opponents have been taking advantage of the current circumstances to limit abortion access.
Read Using the Pandemic as an Excuse to Limit Abortion
Bioethics Forum Essay

Social-Change Games Can Help Us Understand the Public Health Choices We Face

Before there was the Covid-19 pandemic, there was Pandemic. This tabletop game, in which players collaborate to fight disease outbreaks, debuted in 2007. Expansions feature weaponized pathogens, historic pandemics, zoonotic diseases, and vaccine development races. Game mechanics modelled on pandemic vectors provide multiple narratives: battle, quest, detection, discovery. There is satisfaction in playing “against” disease–and winning. Real pandemic is not as tidy as a game. But can games support understanding about the societal challenges we now face? Yes.
Read Social-Change Games Can Help Us Understand the Public Health Choices We Face
Bioethics Forum Essay

Accepting the Challenge: Covid Vaccine Challenge Trials Can Be Ethically Justified

The Covid-19 pandemic is unlikely to end until there is a safe, effective, and widely distributed vaccine. How soon can researchers achieve this goal? The answer largely depends on which strategies researchers are willing to adopt. One potential strategy is to conduct human challenge studies, in which researchers give an experimental vaccine to healthy volunteers and then test—or “challenge”—the vaccine by purposely exposing volunteers to the virus. Although a growing number of voices are calling on researchers to employ this strategy, the proposal is generating a heated debate about the ethics of such research.
Read Accepting the Challenge: Covid Vaccine Challenge Trials Can Be Ethically Justified
Bioethics Forum Essay

Cracks in the System: Lessons Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic

The United States leads the world in coronavirus cases and deaths. Although many people have called out the inadequacies of our health care system, Covid-19 has exposed the most significant shortcomings. The need for change can no longer be ignored. Here are three lessons from this pandemic that should be leveraged for change.
Read Cracks in the System: Lessons Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay

“If the virus doesn’t kill us, the stress and anxiety will.” Immigrants during Covid

Growing isolation, financial challenges and disease burden during the Covid-19 pandemic threaten to worsen the mental health needs of the entire U.S. population. These challenges are heightened among immigrants with untreated chronic mental health conditions as they experience added psychological distress owing to harsh immigration policies and worsening structural barriers to health during the pandemic.
Read “If the virus doesn’t kill us, the stress and anxiety will.” Immigrants during Covid
Bioethics Forum Essay

Bringing Ethics into the Global Coronavirus Response

Covid-19 is a matter of public and global health ethics, and the pandemic is currently accelerating cooperation within and contributions from these fields. A meeting on June 27, hosted by the European Union and Global Citizen, is the latest example another global pledging event on June 27, will include governments and large institutions, as well as individuals and communities worldwide.
Read Bringing Ethics into the Global Coronavirus Response
Bioethics Forum Essay

After the Surge: Prioritizing the Backlog of Delayed Hospital Procedures

The rewards of social distancing are beginning to accrue in former hotspots such as Seattle, the New York metropolitan area, and the San Francisco Bay Area, where the number of new Covid-19 cases requiring hospitalization is declining. Assuming the rewards hold in the face of pressures to reopen the economy, hospitals will now face challenges of reopening their own nonpandemic services for patients whose elective surgeries and other procedures were postponed. Which patients should get priority?
Read After the Surge: Prioritizing the Backlog of Delayed Hospital Procedures
Bioethics Forum Essay

“You Can See Your Loved One Now.” Can Visitor Restrictions During Covid Unduly Influence End-of-Life Decisions?

One of the factors considered most important by dying patients and their families is the opportunity to be together. For many of our hospitalized patients in palliative care, the presence of loved ones at the bedside is such a given that we don’t even address it explicitly in advance care planning discussions. So, it comes as no surprise that Covid- 19-related visitor restrictions affecting hospitalized patients might impact end-of-life decision-making, potentially in ways that are ethically problematic.
Read “You Can See Your Loved One Now.” Can Visitor Restrictions During Covid Unduly Influence End-of-Life Decisions?
Bioethics Forum Essay
gloved hands injecting a vaccine into an exposed shoulder

Human Challenge Studies for Covid-19 Vaccine: Questions about Benefits and Risks

Experts in infectious disease and public health warn that the Covid-19 pandemic will be with us until there is an effective vaccine, possibly 12 to 18 months in the future. This situation has given rise to calls for human challenge studies, in which healthy volunteers are injected with an experimental vaccine and then infected with the disease to test the vaccine’s efficacy. Is this ethically justifiable?
Read Human Challenge Studies for Covid-19 Vaccine: Questions about Benefits and Risks
Bioethics Forum Essay

Committing to Fight Racism

We have reached a very sad, painful moment in the United States. It feels like a cascade of calamities, one compounding the next. An infectious disease pandemic that we cannot yet cure has precipitated an economic crisis. An episode of police brutality against a black man has added the name George Floyd to a long list of victims of unfair policing practices in black communities. Bioethicists have not been doing enough in our professional capacities to actively denounce or address the persistent problems of structural racism. We invite our fellow bioethics colleagues to join us in candid, uncomfortable conversations about what we can and should be doing differently.
Read Committing to Fight Racism
Bioethics Forum Essay

Measure Twice and Cut Once: The Value of Health Care Ethicists in the Pandemic

The major success story of health care ethicists in the pandemic has been their role in establishing ventilator triage policies. But they have more to offer the C-suite of health care institutions.
Read Measure Twice and Cut Once: The Value of Health Care Ethicists in the Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay

Individual Freedom or Public Health? A False Choice in the Covid Era

When scientists first suggested population-wide social distancing as the only feasible way to suppress Covid-19, they were the first to admit it may not work in a free society. We are now months into placing mass restrictions on human behavior to suppress a virus that lacks an effective vaccine or treatment. Now is the time to ask: is this the authoritarian nightmare many feared, or will freedom and democracy survive Covid-19?
Read Individual Freedom or Public Health? A False Choice in the Covid Era
Bioethics Forum Essay

Prioritize Health Care Workers for Ventilators? Not So Fast

In places where Covid-19 is increasing – and in preparation for a possible second wave of the pandemic-- hospitals are preparing to triage critical resources if necessary. Some are prioritizing health care workers for ventilators. We think this is a mistake.
Read Prioritize Health Care Workers for Ventilators? Not So Fast
Bioethics Forum Essay

Warp Speed Bioethics

It takes less time than ever to publish papers. But is quality sacrificed by doing bioethics at warp speed, especially during the Covid pandemic?
Read Warp Speed Bioethics
Bioethics Forum Essay

Clinicians Have a Moral Duty to Care for All Patients–Including Lockdown Protesters

Protesters questioning the ongoing need for lockdown measures aimed at controlling Covid19 are marching to make their concerns known, in some cases with arms and other military paraphernalia. Some ethicists think these protectors should sign a pledge to forego scarce medical care in the name of their political ideas. We disagree.
Read Clinicians Have a Moral Duty to Care for All Patients–Including Lockdown Protesters
Bioethics Forum Essay

Lessons from Covid-19: Why Treating Sick Patients is Bad Business for Hospitals

Hospitals in the United States are losing money taking care of patients with Covid-19. The pandemic casts a harsh spotlight on the misallocation of health care resources in the U.S.
Read Lessons from Covid-19: Why Treating Sick Patients is Bad Business for Hospitals
Bioethics Forum Essay

Covid-19 Underscores Racial Disparity in Advance Directives

Older black Americans are half as likely as older whites to have advanced directives. My patient, a black man in his 70s,, first made his wishes known when he was in the hospital with Covid-19.
Read Covid-19 Underscores Racial Disparity in Advance Directives
Bioethics Forum Essay

Report from Sub-Saharan Africa: “When the Health Fundamentals Are Weak, Covid Will Expose You.”

The cries of millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa and in low- and middle-income countries elsewhere who are struggling to stay alive because of Covid-19 and the lockdowns call for us to revisit the conceptual framework of the human right to health.
Read Report from Sub-Saharan Africa: “When the Health Fundamentals Are Weak, Covid Will Expose You.”
Bioethics Forum Essay
The Hastings Center

Post-Covid Bioethics

Covid-19 is making bioethics more relevant than ever. The ethical dilemmas raised by the pandemic are urgent and heart-wrenching. Who should get a ventilator if we do not have enough? How can we protect the most vulnerable from discrimination in the face of difficult triage decisions? How do we weigh individual liberty against the public interest of keeping people confined? While such questions are not new for bioethicists, the need to answer them urgently, globally, and in very concrete settings, creates unprecedented circumstances. Is this an opportunity for bioethics to learn some important lessons? What should post-Covid bioethics look like?
Read Post-Covid Bioethics
Bioethics Forum Essay

Beyond the Covid Crisis—A New Social Contract with Public Health

Covid-19 is teaching us the stern lesson that economic well-being and health justice are two sides of the same coin. To weather pandemics and restore the social contact that economic life demands, we need to sign a new social contract with public health.
Read Beyond the Covid Crisis—A New Social Contract with Public Health
Bioethics Forum Essay

Why I Don’t Support Age-Related Rationing During the Covid Pandemic

Some bioethicists support age-related rationing of ventilators during the Covid-19 pandemic as a way to save the most lives. But that goal might be better realized without strict age cutoffs.
Read Why I Don’t Support Age-Related Rationing During the Covid Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay

#WeAreEssential: Why Disabled People Should Be Appointed to Hospital Triage Committees

There's a long history of conflict between the institution of medicine, bioethics, and the disability community. With Covid-19 disproportionately affecting people with disabilities, we must do everything we can to avoid a triage decision-making process that pushes disabled people to the side. One important action is to appoint people with disabilities, and especially those of color, to hospital triage committees. To our knowledge, no hospital or state crisis standards of care protocol mandates this kind of representation.
Read #WeAreEssential: Why Disabled People Should Be Appointed to Hospital Triage Committees
Bioethics Forum Essay

A Covid-19 Side Effect: Virulent Resurgence of Ageism

Of all the “isms,” ageism is arguably the hardest to address because old age neither a valued stage of life nor an identity that many claim. The coronavirus pandemic may have made that effort even harder.
Read A Covid-19 Side Effect: Virulent Resurgence of Ageism
Bioethics Forum Essay

Diversity and Solidarity in Response to Covid-19

Covid-19 imposes burdens in different—but very serious—ways on different individuals and groups. We see it in policies that address what to do in the face of shortages of scarce resources. We begin by challenging a common claim—that people with disabilities as a group will be harmed by triage policies that consider patients’ prospect of medical benefit.
Read Diversity and Solidarity in Response to Covid-19
Bioethics Forum Essay

Should New Mothers With Covid-19 Be Separated From Their Newborns?

The Covid-19 pandemic has been characterized by many unknowns, chief among them in the world of pediatric ethics is the question of separating mothers who are infected or suspected of being infected from their newborns after delivery to reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission. Guidance on this issue is conflicting.
Read Should New Mothers With Covid-19 Be Separated From Their Newborns?
Bioethics Forum Essay

Why Health Care Workers Should Receive Priority Care for Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has imposed tremendous risk on doctors, nurses, and other health care workers not seen in a century. It is time to reconsider prioritization of health care workers’ access to scare critical resources. Historically, for multiple reasons, health care workers have not been prioritized for access to medical care during a pandemic. However, given the unprecedented circumstances surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, it is justifiable to prioritize health care workers when all else is equal between two patients.
Read Why Health Care Workers Should Receive Priority Care for Covid-19
Bioethics Forum Essay

Sustaining Clinical Empathy During the Pandemic

As Covid-19 continues to spread throughout the United States, doctors, nurses, and oth-er clinicians are facing unmistakable tragedies. But something less perceptible is afoot. Empathy in medicine is under siege.
Read Sustaining Clinical Empathy During the Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay

Teaching Medical Ethics During the Pandemic

Despite the disruptive changes to my undergraduate medical ethics class this semester, my students have learned a lot about the paradox that the coronavirus presents: it is an unprecedented event, beyond the experience of nearly everyone alive today, and yet it puts on grim display the well-known problems of inequality that chronically plague the United States. Since week six of the semester, I have readjusted each unit on the syllabus to address some of the ethical issues that Covid-19 has brought to the fore, familiar challenges that have been stressed and distorted in astonishing ways by the pandemic.
Read Teaching Medical Ethics During the Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay

Show Me Your Passport: Ethical Concerns About Covid-19 Antibody Testing as Key to Reopening Public Life

Around the world, governments are looking for safe ways to lift unprecedented restrictions on public activities to curb the spread of Covid-19. So-called immunity passports could be key to the effort to selectively ease restrictions for people presumed to be immune to the virus. But there are scientific and ethical questions to be worked out before they can be deployed. .
Read Show Me Your Passport: Ethical Concerns About Covid-19 Antibody Testing as Key to Reopening Public Life
Bioethics Forum Essay

Ethical Medicine Means Getting Political

Dilemmas that clinicians face in the coronavirus pandemic–who gets the ventilator, the 80-year-old grandmother or the 20-year-old student?–are the bread and butter of mainstream bioethics. In medical school, my classmates and I memorized the four principles (beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, and autonomy), which we were told would help us make hard clinical decisions in ethically ambiguous terrain. But Covid-19 shows that medical ethics means much more than what generally falls under bioethics. Medical ethics is deeply political, and to act ethically in medicine means engaging the larger context in which it operates.
Read Ethical Medicine Means Getting Political
Bioethics Forum Essay

Ethical Responsibility in Publishing Research Results on Covid-19 Treatments

There is little doubt about the urgent need for Covid-19 treatment. But premature publication of definitive recommendations based on inappropriate conclusions grounded in scant, hastily-acquired data serve only at best to confuse and at worst mislead at a time when tensions are high and need for help is great.
Read Ethical Responsibility in Publishing Research Results on Covid-19 Treatments
Bioethics Forum Essay

Clinical Trials vs. Right to Try: Ethical Use of Chloroquine for Covid-19

Double-blind randomized clinical trials are the gold standard for answering the scientific question of whether a drug produces any effect, positive or negative, in Covid-19 patients. But is rational for a patient to choose to try a drug such as chloroquine for Covid-19 outside of a trial? Some patients may correctly hold that they have little to lose.
Read Clinical Trials vs. Right to Try: Ethical Use of Chloroquine for Covid-19
Bioethics Forum Essay

When to Reopen the Nation is an Ethics Question—Not Only a Scientific One

As the world reels from the Covid-19 pandemic, two things have become very clear: the health impacts of the disease are devastating, but the aggressive social distancing policies currently being used to flatten the curve also have serious costs. As a result, the question of when and how to reopen the nation is on everyone’s mind. Do we open quickly in an effort to kick-start the economy? Or do we remain under lockdown as long as possible to stop the spread of the virus?
Read When to Reopen the Nation is an Ethics Question—Not Only a Scientific One
Bioethics Forum Essay

Religion During the Coronavirus Pandemic: Islamic Bioethical Perspectives

Congregational rituals of religious communities around the world have attracted attention for their possible threat of spreading the coronavirus. Negative Media coverage has generally depicted members of religious communities as more or less “reckless” groups whose “fanatic” convictions can make them harm others from inside or outside their religious traditions. However, what hasn’t been discussed is how this issue should be approached as a complex bioethical issue that concerns people worldwide. With the beginning of Ramadan, paying attention to the nuances and complexities of this issue becomes especially pressing.
Read Religion During the Coronavirus Pandemic: Islamic Bioethical Perspectives
Bioethics Forum Essay
migrant workers

Immigrants, Health Inequities, and Social Citizenship in Covid-19 Response and Recovery

Read Immigrants, Health Inequities, and Social Citizenship in Covid-19 Response and Recovery
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Covid Threat No One Is Talking About: Wearing Scrubs in Public

The Covid-19 outbreak has forced health care providers, administrative officials, and the general public to each play their part in doing no harm to others. It may come as a surprise to many people, but health care workers may unknowingly spread Covid-19 in their communities simply by wearing scrubs in public.
Read The Covid Threat No One Is Talking About: Wearing Scrubs in Public
Bioethics Forum Essay

Denying Ventilators to Covid-19 Patients with Prior DNR Orders is Unethical

Previously-stated DNR status would seem irrelevant to ventilator allocation, and yet some existing and proposed guidelines for triage during a public health emergency list DNR status in the list of criteria for excluding patients from getting ventilators or other life-saving health care. This approach is in direct opposition to the generally agreed-upon goal of maximizing the number of survivors, and could result in confusion and public mistrust of the health care system.
Read Denying Ventilators to Covid-19 Patients with Prior DNR Orders is Unethical
Bioethics Forum Essay

Structural Racism, White Fragility, and Ventilator Rationing Policies

It’s been painful to watch health leaders twist themselves into moral knots denying that recently created ventilator rationing guidance will differentially affect Blacks, Latinx, and other people of color. On television, in newspapers, and on listservs, when the predicted disproportionate impacts of these policies are raised, some bioethicists-often white, stonewall. Or repeat a policy’s assertions that race, ethnicity, disability, etc. are irrelevant to care decisions. Or default to the intent of the policymakers.
Read Structural Racism, White Fragility, and Ventilator Rationing Policies
Bioethics Forum Essay

Please Don’t (Need to) Use My Work

I helped develop guidelines for the ethical allocation of scarce resources during a public health emergency, such as a pandemic..I hope my contributions have an impact. I especially hope to see my work used since it emphasizes the perspectives of minority and underserved communities, who tend to have less voice in health policy. But now I find myself dreading the use of my work.
Read Please Don’t (Need to) Use My Work
Bioethics Forum Essay

Ethics and Evidence in the Search for a Vaccine and Treatments for Covid-19

In the rush to find a Covid-19 vaccine and one or more drugs to treat the deadly disease, concerns are being raised that ethical standards for conducting human clinical trials and the evidentiary standards for determining whether interventions are safe and effective, might be loosened.
Read Ethics and Evidence in the Search for a Vaccine and Treatments for Covid-19
Bioethics Forum Essay

U.S. and Canada: Being Good Neighbors in the Pandemic

Canada has a fraction of the number of cases of Covid-19 as the U.S. Canadians feel vulnerable. But Canadians and Americans need to find ways to build and maintain trust within and across our borders.
Read U.S. and Canada: Being Good Neighbors in the Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay

On Being an Elder in a Pandemic

Do the elderly have special obligations during a pandemic, that is, something more than the duty we all have for hand washing, social distancing, and so on? I believe the answer is, yes, and foremost among these is an obligation for parsimonious use of newly scarce and expensive health care resources.
Read On Being an Elder in a Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay

When It Comes to Rationing, Disability Rights Law Prohibits More than Prejudice

This week, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights resolved one of many civil rights complaints alleging discrimination on the basis of disability–the first instance of federal intervention to enforce civil rights laws in rationing protocols since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis. But more work is needed to protect patients with disabilities in the allocation of scarce medical resources.
Read When It Comes to Rationing, Disability Rights Law Prohibits More than Prejudice
Bioethics Forum Essay

Why I Support Age-Related Rationing of Ventilators for Covid-19 Patients

As a 71-year-old bioethicist, I consider rationing mechanical ventilation based on age to be one morally relevant criterion during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Read Why I Support Age-Related Rationing of Ventilators for Covid-19 Patients
Bioethics Forum Essay

The Price of Going Back to Work Too Soon

Read The Price of Going Back to Work Too Soon
Bioethics Forum Essay

Confronting Disability Discrimination During the Pandemic

As hospitals and public health authorities devise triage protocols to allocate scarce critical-care resources during the Covid-19 pandemic, people with disabilities are expressing alarm that these protocols devalue them and exacerbate long-entrenched ableism in health care. Lawsuits alleging disability discrimination in have been filed in Washington and Alabama. The U.S. Office for Civil Rights is investigating disability discrimination complaints in triage protocols. The challenge is to develop protocols that will minimize discrimination in the health care system.
Read Confronting Disability Discrimination During the Pandemic
Bioethics Forum Essay
gofundme

Crowdfunding for Covid-Related Needs: Unfair and Inadequate

One-third of all new GoFundMe campaigns in the United States are for COVID-19-related needs. This shows where we have failed as a society. It is a makeshift response to institutional failures and not a fair or sustainable solution to crises.
Read Crowdfunding for Covid-Related Needs: Unfair and Inadequate
Bioethics Forum Essay

We Need International Medical Graduates to Help Fight Covid-19. Immigration Policies Keep Them Away

Read We Need International Medical Graduates to Help Fight Covid-19. Immigration Policies Keep Them Away
Bioethics Forum Essay

Flattening the Curve, Then What?

Read Flattening the Curve, Then What?
Bioethics Forum Essay

False Hope About Coronavirus Treatments

While patients can and do recover from coronavirus infections, there are currently no approved treatments that are known to work against COVID-19.
Read False Hope About Coronavirus Treatments
Bioethics Forum Essay
quarantine sign

COVID-19 and the Global Ethics Freefall

Since the initial outbreak in Wuhan last December, the national and global responses to COVID-19 have been in ethics freefall.
Read COVID-19 and the Global Ethics Freefall
Bioethics Forum Essay
covid coronavirus

COVID: Collective of Voices in Distress

Read COVID: Collective of Voices in Distress
Bioethics Forum Essay

Coronavirus and the Crisis of Trust

Influenza and coronavirus cause similar symptoms probably through similar modes of transmission. What is unique about coronavirus is that misinformation, missteps, conspiracies, and cover-ups have left their mark on public trust.
Read Coronavirus and the Crisis of Trust
The Hastings Center
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