Different approach to medical decision-making in difficult circumstances: Kittay's Ethics of Care.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated advances in bioethical approaches to medical decision-making. This paper develops an alternative method for rationing care during periods of resource scarcity. Typical approaches to triaging rely on utilitarian calculations; however, this approach introduces a problematic antihumanist sentiment, inviting the proposition of alternative schemata. As such, we suggest a feminist approach to medical decision-making, founded in and expanding upon the framework of Eva Kittay's Ethics of Care. We suggest that this new structure addresses the issue of medical decision-making during times of resource scarcity just as well as pure utilitarian approaches while better attending to their significant theoretical concerns, forming a coherent alternative to the current bioethical consensus.

Taoism, bioethics, and the COVID-19 pandemic

The stress that the COVID-19 pandemic has placed on health systems internationally has forced difficult decisions concerning the rationing of medical care and has put the bioethical structures that inform those choices under scrutiny. Often, ethical approaches to pandemic circumstances center around utilitarianism, dehumanizing the treatment process and ignoring the plurality of other philosophical doctrines that inform non-Western bioethics, which could be of use in addressing the pandemic. This paper focuses on philosophical Taoism, as developed in the Tao Te Ching and Zhuangzi, in order to suggest an alternative approach to medical care when medical capacity is limited, grounded in the concept of wu-wei, or inaction.

Taoism, bioethics, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The stress that the COVID-19 pandemic has placed on health systems internationally has forced difficult decisions concerning the rationing of medical care and has put the bioethical structures that inform those choices under scrutiny. Often, ethical approaches to pandemic circumstances center around utilitarianism, dehumanizing the treatment process and ignoring the plurality of other philosophical doctrines that inform non-Western bioethics, which could be of use in addressing the pandemic. This paper focuses on philosophical Taoism, as developed in the Tao Te Ching and Zhuangzi, in order to suggest an alternative approach to medical care when medical capacity is limited, grounded in the concept of wu-wei, or inaction.