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?

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Written by Stephen Rainey It is presently feared that ‘lockdown’ may be beginning to fray at the edges, as people tire of their restrictions. From the start of the emergency, discussion focussed upon the ability of the public to stay the course where restrictions were at stake. This neatly ignores the public’s being ahead of […]

by Joseph Stramondo, Ph.D.

While I have warned against using quality of life criteria when developing triage protocol, what about the strategy of using as a criterion the likelihood of whether a patient will survive COVID-19 even with aggressive treatment?…

This essay received an honourable mention in the Graduate Category Written by University of Oxford Student, Brian Wong Injustices are ubiquitous around us. From authoritarian regimes’ crackdown on human rights, to exploitative trafficking of illegal migrants, to human-induced destruction of rainforests upon which indigenous groups depend – injustices are negative states of affairs violating moral […]

by Joseph Stramondo, PhD

Bioethicists and physicians scrambling to develop triage protocols for the COVID-19 crisis might have been surprised that counsel from Self Advocates in Leadership (SAIL), Disability Rights Washington (DRW), and The Arc of the United States (The Arc) filed a complaint recently with the U.S.…

This essay was the winning entry in the graduate category of the 6th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics. Written by University of Oxford student, Maya Krishnan.   Introduction Late one night in Managua, Nicaragua, a man punched Leslie Jamison in the face and then ran away with her camera. Jamison called the police. […]

by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.

Doctors in Italy have run out of beds. They have run out of ventilators. They are now having to decide who may live and who will likely die.…

by Steven H. Miles, MD

In the face of the COVID-9 pandemic, many bioethicists are turning their attention to scholarship of triage ethics.…