ABSTRACT
How should we think of the preferences of citizens? Whereas self-optimal policy is relatively straightforward to produce, socially optimal policy often requires a more detailed examination. In this paper, we identify an issue that has received far too little attention in welfarist modelling of public policy, which we name the “hidden assumptions” problem. Hidden assumptions can be deceptive because they are not expressed explicitly and the social planner (e.g. a policy maker, a regulator, a legislator) may not give them the critical attention they need. We argue that ethical expertise has a direct role to play in public discourse because it is hard to adopt a position on major issues like public health policy or healthcare prioritisation without making contentious assumptions about population ethics. We then postulate that ethicists are best situated to critically evaluate these hidden assumptions, and can therefore play a vital role in public policy debates. © 2022 Sciendo. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Risk is a concept that is usually evaluated by scientists and public health experts by comparing probabilities. However, this ethical utilitarian perspective, which considers that the best decision is the one that has less probability of harm than of benefit, does not consider normative aspects based on other ethical perspectives. Interpreting the origin of public controversies arising from people's reactions to the small risks of attenuated SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and evaluating the responses of public institutions requires an understanding of both the cognitive aspects that introduce systematic biases in the assessment of probabilities and the sociological, ethical, and political framework that contextualizes risk management in modern societies.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , SARS-CoV-2 , COVID-19 Vaccines , Cognition , Humans , Public HealthABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: One of the many challenges public health practitioners have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic is deciding on the optimal allocation of limited healthcare resources. The current paper addresses the normative question of how medical resources can be optimally distributed during the current pandemic. METHODS: As an article of short communication, an ethical analysis from the moral perspectives of distributive justice was conducted. RESULTS: As multiple moral considerations must be analyzed to construct an ethically grounded and systematic allocation system, conflicting notions regarding efficiency, equity, and distributive justice are considered. Several practical recommendations were derived by leveraging the values of utilitarian, egalitarian, and prioritarian approaches to the proposed normative question. CONCLUSIONS: Transparent, equitable, and consistent allocation mechanisms underpinned by the ethical values and recommendations presented in this paper should inform prioritization guidelines when medical resources are stretched.
ABSTRACT
We all now know that the novel coronavirus is anything but a common cold. The pandemic has created many new obligations for all of us, several of which come with serious costs to our quality of life. But in some cases, the guidance and the law are open to a degree of interpretation, leaving us to decide what is the ethical (or unethical but desired) course of action. Because of the high cost of some of the obligations, a conflict of interest can arise between what we want to do and what it is right to do. And so, some people choose to respect only the letter of the law, but not the spirit, or not to respect even the spirit of the guidelines. This paper identifies and describes the new obligations imposed on us all by the pandemic, considers their costs in terms of the good life, and provides an ethical analysis of two personal and two public cases in terms of the letter and spirit of the guidance and legislation.