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Bioethics news.

Bundesliga gears up to be first professional sports league to return after pandemic shutdown
On Thursday, the German Football League (DFL) announced the top divisions (Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga) are planning to resume their seasons as early as May 9, pending final approval next week from the German government.
The Washington Post, 04/25/2020
Vaccine Rates Drop Dangerously as Parents Avoid Doctor’s Visits
Afraid of Covid-19, parents are postponing well-child checkups, including shots, putting millions of children at risk of exposure to preventable deadly diseases.
The New York Times, 04/24/2020
Structural Racism, White Fragility, and Ventilator Rationing Policies
The inequitable racial landscape of the United States is hardly deniable. The effects of racism on health status and on access to health care are well documented. Comprehensive race/ethnicity data relevant to Covid-19 will likely affirm inequitable patterns in exposure, testing, and treatment, patterns that are already being observed by practitioners in some facilities and officials in some states.
The Hastings Center, 04/23/2020
The Pandemic’s Hidden Victims: Sick or Dying, but Not From the Virus
As the coronavirus overwhelms the health care system, people with other illnesses struggle to find treatment.
The New York Times, 04/22/2020
Small California Town Hopes Testing Will Show How Coronavirus Is Spread
A small town in northern California will become the first in the nation to try to test everyone for the Coronavirus, regardless of symptoms, in an effort to better understand how the virus spreads and how antibodies against the disease are built.
NPR, 04/21/2020
Shortage Of Dialysis Equipment Leads To Difficult Decisions In New York ICUs
After weeks of searching high and low for ventilators, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and health care leaders around the state have seen signs of improvement and are sending some of the frantically acquired units to New Jersey, where they’re increasingly needed. But now, many hospital workers on the front lines in the metro area have been sounding the alarm that...
NPR, 04/20/2020
NIH Launches Effort To Speed Up Development Of COVID-19 Treatments
In an bid to help speed up the development of potential treatment options and a vaccine for COVID-19, the National Institutes of Health on Friday announced a new public-private research partnership.
NPR, 04/18/2020
Ethics and Evidence in the Search for a Vaccine and Treatments for Covid-19
During public heath emergencies like the Covid-19 pandemic, when no known preventive or effective treatment exists, researchers understandably want to start conducting studies with humans as soon as possible to find a vaccine and therapeutic treatments that are safe and effective. Yet in the rush to find a Covid-19 vaccine and one or more drugs to treat the deadly disease, concerns...
The Hastings Center, 04/17/2020
People With Disabilities Fear Pandemic Will Worsen Medical Biases
It’s a moment that people with disabilities have long feared: there’s a shortage of life-saving equipment, like ventilators, and doctors say they may be forced to decide who lives and who dies. People with disabilities worry those judgments will reflect a prejudice that their lives hold less value.
NPR, 04/16/2020
New signs suggest coronavirus was in California far earlier than anyone knew
Early COVID-19 deaths in the San Francisco Bay Area suggest that the novel coronavirus had established itself in the community long before health officials started looking for it. The lag time has had dire consequences, allowing the virus to spread unchecked before social distancing rules went into effect.
LA Times, 04/14/2020
Women Say They Are ‘Falling Off The Cliff Of Fertility’ As Pandemic Puts Treatments On Hold
Tens of thousands of women across the country trying to have a baby through fertility treatments are in limbo because of COVID-19: They’ve had to postpone their appointments indefinitely due to coronavirus recommendations recently issued by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. But now some fertility specialists and their patients are pushing back.
NPR, 04/13/2020
How far has coronavirus spread? This test is a first step in trying to get back to normal life
It has been one of the most glaring unanswered questions of the coronavirus crisis: How much has the virus spread? A new study in Los Angeles County might help provide some answers.
LA Times, 04/11/2020
Why I Support Age-Related Rationing of Ventilators for Covid-19 Patients
A 71-year-old bioethicist explains why he considers rationing mechanical ventilation based on age to be one morally relevant criterion.
The Hastings Center, 04/10/2020
The America We Need
The coronavirus pandemic may have reminded Americans that they are all in it together. But it has also shown them how dangerously far they are apart.
The New York Times, 04/09/2020
President Trump’s Call For Return Of Pro Sports Faces Public Health Hurdles
Despite the global coronavirus pandemic raging across the United States right now, sports fans can expect to be back cheering on their teams at stadiums and arenas by the time the NFL is set to kick-off its regular season in early September. That is one of the aspirations President Donald Trump shared with leaders of U.S. major professional sports...
Forbes, 04/07/2020
Crowdfunding for Covid-Related Needs: Unfair and Inadequate
Crowdfunding is a response to personal and social crises. Not surprisingly, many individuals and organizations are turning to crowdfunding to help those impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. These campaigns have already received over $60 million in donations. While this is, in most respects, an understandable and admirable response to a global emergency, crowdfunding also shows where we have failed as a society....
The Hastings Center, 04/06/2020
Scarcity in the Covid-19 Pandemic
There is still a possibility that the coronavirus pandemic will be manageably bad rather than unmanageably catastrophic in this country. Immediate, powerful, and sustained federal action could make the difference.
The Hastings Center, 04/04/2020
Where America Didn’t Stay Home Even as the Virus Spread
Stay-at-home orders have nearly halted travel for most Americans, but people in Florida, the Southeast and other places that waited to enact such orders have continued to travel widely, potentially exposing more people as the coronavirus outbreak accelerates, according to an analysis of cellphone location data by The New York Times.
The New York Times, 04/03/2020
‘We have no choice.’ Pandemic forces polio eradication group to halt campaigns
The COVID-19 pandemic is imperiling the worldwide, 3-decade drive to wipe out polio. In an unprecedented move, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) has recommended suspending polio vaccination campaigns to help stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Science Mag , 04/02/2020
Underlying Health Disparities Could Mean Coronavirus Hits Some Communities Harder
As the coronavirus spreads across the country, millions of Americans already struggling with health and finances — especially those in minority communities — could bear the brunt of it.
NPR, 04/01/2020
How Much Should the Public Know About Who Has the Coronavirus?
As the coronavirus spreads across the United States the limited disclosure of data by officials would seem to be a footnote to the suffering and economic disruptions that the disease is causing. But medical experts say that how much the public should know has become a critical question that will help determine how the United States confronts this outbreak and...
The New York Times, 03/31/2020
New York’s bioethics experts prepare for a wave of difficult decisions
As the coronavirus pandemic fills medical beds, saps supplies of lifesaving equipment and protective gear, and exhausts clinicians, ethics experts will be on hand to help hospitals make tough choices. At the heart of the matter is a question: How do you choose between patients when allocating limited resources?
The Washington Post, 03/30/2020
India’s Coronavirus Lockdown Leaves Vast Numbers Stranded and Hungry
Millions of migrant laborers in Indian cities live and eat where they work, and the sudden shutdown of businesses has upended their lives. Anger is rising.
The New York Times, 03/29/2020
How Johnson & Johnson companies used a ‘super poppy’ to make narcotics for America’s most abused opioid pills
As the United States was succumbing to an epidemic of addiction, the Johnson & Johnson family of companies became the leading maker of narcotics for popular opioid pills, a dominance achieved through decades of innovation, navigation of U.S. drug policy, and the cultivation of poppies in this remote haven on the other side of the world.
The Washington Post, 03/28/2020
How well are we social distancing? Smartphone location data can rank the states
Health officials have begged Americans to practice social distancing and many states and cities have issued stay-at-home or shelter-in-place orders to slow the spread of coronavirus. But not everyone is listening. Now, a tech company is using smartphone data to see where people are taking these instructions seriously.
USA Today, 03/27/2020
Hospitals consider universal do-not-resuscitate orders for coronavirus patients
Worry that ‘all hands’ responses may expose doctors and nurses to...
The Washington Post, 03/26/2020
Clinical Data Sharing for AI: Proposed Framework Could Rouse Debate
A group of doctors from Stanford University has proposed a framework for sharing clinical data for artificial intelligence (AI) that could set off a firestorm of debate about who truly owns medical data, ethical obligations to share it, and how to properly police researchers who use it. On the other hand, the envisioned approach has parallels to the open science tactics currently being...
Clinical Research News , 03/25/2020
‘I Will Not Apologize for My Needs’
Even in a crisis, doctors should not abandon the principle of nondiscrimination.
The New York Times, 03/24/2020
Ethicists agree on who gets treated first when hospitals are overwhelmed by coronavirus
As health care systems are overwhelmed with more patients than they can feasibly treat, medical personnel are forced to decide who should get the available ventilators and ICU beds. Quartz spoke with eight ethicists, all of whom agreed that in such dire situations, those who have the best chance of surviving get priority. Despite the unanimity, all agreed that this...
Quartz, 03/21/2020
At-home tests for coronavirus are here. Should you take them?
With delays in testing hampering the country’s ability to accurately track the new coronavirus and shelter-in-place orders keeping many Americans at home, startups are swooping in with a seemingly ideal solution: at-home tests
STAT, 03/21/2020