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.
The post Report from Sub-Saharan Africa: “When the Health Fundamentals are Weak, Covid Will Expose You.” appeared first on The Hastings Center.
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?
The post Post-Covid Bioethics appeared first on The Hastings Center.
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.
The post Beyond the Covid Crisis—A New Social Contract with Public Health appeared first on The Hastings Center.
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.
The post Why I Don’t Support Age-Related Rationing During the Covid Pandemic appeared first on The Hastings Center.
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.
The post #WeAreEssential: Why Disabled People Should Be Appointed to Hospital Triage Committees appeared first on The Hastings Center.
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.
The post A Covid-19 Side Effect: Virulent Resurgence of Ageism appeared first on The Hastings Center.
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.
The post Diversity and Solidarity in Response to Covid-19 appeared first on The Hastings Center.
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.
The post Why New Mothers With Covid-19 Should Not Be Separated From Their Newborns appeared first on The Hastings Center.
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.
The post Why Health Care Workers Should Receive Priority Care for Covid-19 appeared first on The Hastings Center.
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.
The post Sustaining Clinical Empathy During the Pandemic appeared first on The Hastings Center.
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