The Ethics of Pandemics

Meredith Celene Schwartz has taught health-care ethics and philosophy courses at Dalhousie University and Ryerson University. She is the author of Moral Respect, Objectification, and Health Care, co-author of Gestational Trophoblastic Neoplasia, and co-editor of Readings in Health Care Ethics, 3rd Edition.

Introduction

Chapter 1 Public Health Ethics

1.1 John Authers, How Coronavirus Is Shaking Up the Moral Universe: The Pandemic Is Putting Profound Philosophical Questions to the Test
1.2 Nuala P. Kenny, Susan B. Sherwin, and Françoise E. Baylis, Re-visioning Public Health Ethics: A Relational Perspective
Questions for Reflection

Chapter 2 Professional Responsibilities

2.1 Udo Schuklenk, Health Care Professionals Are under No Ethical Obligation to Treat COVID-19 Patients
2.2 Abbey Lowe, Angela Hewlett, and Toby Schonfeld, How Should Clinicians Respond to International Public Health Emergencies?
2.3 Seth Holmes and Liza Buchbinder, In a Defunded Health System, Doctors and Nurses Suffer Near-Impossible Conditions
Case Study: Health Care without PPE
Questions for Reflection

Chapter 3 Public Adherence

3.1 Tom Douglas, Flouting Quarantine
3.2 Charles M. Blow, Social Distancing Is a Privilege: The Idea that This Virus Is an Equal-Opportunity Killer Must Itself Be Killed
Case Study: Going to a Park
Questions for Reflection

Chapter 4 Scarce Resource Allocation

4.1 Ezekiel J. Emanuel et al., Fair Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources in the Time of COVID-19
4.2 Angela Ballantyne, ICU Triage: How Many Lives or Whose Lives?
4.3 Jackie Leach Scully, Disablism in a Time of Pandemic
4.4 Joseph J. Fins, Disabusing the Disability Critique of the New York State Task Force Report on Ventilator Allocation
4.5 Franklin G. Miller, Why I Support Age-Related Rationing of Ventilators for COVID-19 Patients
4.6 Shai Held, The Staggering, Heartless Cruelty toward the Elderly: A Global Pandemic Doesn’t Give Us Cause to Treat the Aged Callously
Case Study: Ventilator Shortages: Who Should Live?
Questions for Reflection

Chapter 5 Justice

5.1 Shaun Ossei-Owusu, Coronavirus and the Politics of Disposability
5.2 Alex Broadbent and Benjamin T.H. Smart, Why a One- Size-Fits-All Approach to COVID-19 Could Have Lethal Consequences
Case Study: Staying in Business
Questions for Reflection

Chapter 6 Research Ethics

6.1 Julian Savulescu, Is It Right to Cut Corners in the Search for a Coronavirus Cure?
6.2 Nir Eyal, Marc Lipsitch, and Peter G. Smith, Human Challenge Studies to Accelerate Coronavirus Vaccine Licensure
6.3 Kelly McBride Folkers and Arthur Caplan, False Hope about Coronavirus Treatments
Case Study: Ethics and Global Research Programs
Questions for Reflection

Chapter 7 Surveillance and Privacy

7.1 Derek Thompson, The Technology that Could Free America from Quarantine
7.2 Maciej Cegłowski, We Need a Massive Surveillance Program
7.3 Sean McDonald, Coronavirus: A Digital Governance Emergency of International Concern
Case Study: Physician-Patient Privilege vs. Public Health Policy
Questions for Reflection

Chapter 8 Reopening

8.1 Arthur Caplan, The Price of Going Back to Work Too Soon
8.2 Conor Friedersdorf, Take the Shutdown Skeptics Seriously
8.3 Daniel Weinstock, A Harm Reduction Approach to Physical Distancing
8.4 Anthony Skelton and Lisa Forsberg, Mandating Vaccination
Case Study: Choosing Not to Vaccinate
Questions for Reflection
Permissions
Acknowledgments
Index