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Alberto Giubilini

Conscience Rights or Conscience Wrongs?: Debating Conscientious Objection in Healthcare

Written by: David Albert Jones, Anscombe Bioethics Centre

& Alberto Giubilini, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, University of Oxford

 

For the purpose of this debate (held online on 12 October 2020), Alberto Giubilini and David Albert Jones each adopted a position on conscientious objection (CO) contrary to the one that he in fact holds. David A. Jones, who is a defender of a right to conscientious objection in healthcare, made the case against it. Alberto Giubilini, who is against a right to conscientious objection in healthcare, made the case in favour of it. What follows is an evaluation by each of the arguments of the other in relation to their strengths and how they were presented.Read More »Conscience Rights or Conscience Wrongs?: Debating Conscientious Objection in Healthcare

Pandemic Ethics: Should Santa Claus Deliver Christmas Presents This Year? Preparing For Our First COVID-19 Christmas

Written by: Alberto Giubilini; Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, &

Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, University of Oxford

(In the picture: 2020 letter to Santa Claus by Eleonora D.D.)

It’s that time of the year again, when Christmas decorations start to appear way too early in shopping malls. It’s beginning to look a bit too much like Christmas. Except that, being it 2020, of course this year “it will be different”.

Pubs are very optimistically accepting bookings for Christmas dinners, but many Christmas markets are (un)fortunately being cancelled. You might still see your distant relatives on Christmas day, but (un)fortunately no more than 6 of them at any one time.

Amidst the inevitable confusion, one obvious question is whether Santa Claus should deliver presents this year.

There are various factors to consider when deciding what Santa – but indeed everyone else – should be allowed to do over Christmas. The most relevant are probably the following:

  1. COVID-19 infection rate over Christmas.
  2. Risks and benefits for others of Santa’s job.
  3. Risks and benefits for Santa

Read More »Pandemic Ethics: Should Santa Claus Deliver Christmas Presents This Year? Preparing For Our First COVID-19 Christmas

COVID-19: Ethical Guidelines for the Exit Strategy

Alberto Giubilini

Julian Savulescu

Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

University of Oxford

Supported by the UKRI/AHRC funded project “The Ethical Exit Strategy”

(Grant number AH/V006819/1)

https://practicalethics.web.ox.ac.uk/ethical-exit-strategy-covid-19

These are the “Main Points” and the Executive Summary of a Statement on key ethical considerations and recommendations for the UK “Exit Strategy”, that is, the strategy informing the series of measures to move the country from the state of lockdown introduced in March 2020 to a ‘new normality’.

The full Statement can be found at https://practicalethics.web.ox.ac.uk/files/covidexitstatement1octaccpdf

The document has been produced also on the basis of the discussion among academics and stakeholders from different fields (ethics, economics, medicine, paediatrics, mental health, nursing), who participated in an online workshop on the “Ethical Exit Strategy”, held on the 8th of July 2020.Read More »COVID-19: Ethical Guidelines for the Exit Strategy

Contact-tracing apps and the future COVID-19 vaccination should be compulsory. Social, technological, and pharmacological immunisation

Written by Alberto Giubilini

Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities – Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

University of Oxford

 

 

Main point:

Lockdown measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 have so far been compulsory in most countries. In the same way, use of contact tracing apps should be compulsory once lockdown measures are relaxed. And in the same way, vaccination should be compulsory once the COVID-19 vaccine is available.

We can think of the lockdown as a form of ‘social immunization’, of contact tracing apps as a form of ‘technological immunization’, and of course of vaccination as pharmacological immunization. The same reasons that justify compulsory lockdown also justify compulsion in the other two cases.

Read More »Contact-tracing apps and the future COVID-19 vaccination should be compulsory. Social, technological, and pharmacological immunisation

Why You Should Not (Be Allowed To) Have That Picnic in the Park, Even if it Does Not Make a Difference

Written by Alberto Giubilini

 

(a slightly longer version of this blogpost will appear in the journal Think. Link will be provided as soon as available)

It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon, early spring. The kind of afternoon that seems to be inviting you out for a stroll by the river. Maybe have a picnic on the green grass, in that spot over there, away from everyone. Why not?

The simple answer is: because there is a pandemic and the Government is enforcing a lockdown. You should stay home. End of the story.

And there isn’t a complex answer. The simple answer really is the end of the story.

But why? You probably understand the reasons for the lockdown. But that is a matter of policy, a general rule for the population. What difference does it make if I just go over there, where there is no one, keeping at distance from everyone? I am not going to harm anyone.

You are (probably) right: it (likely) does not make a difference, and you are (likely) not harming anyone. However, that is not the only relevant question to ask when we ask what we morally ought to do, or what a Government may permissibly require of us.

Let us consider the ethically relevant aspects of this situation.Read More »Why You Should Not (Be Allowed To) Have That Picnic in the Park, Even if it Does Not Make a Difference

Should we Believe in Santa Claus?

Written by Alberto Giubilini

Oxford Martin School and Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities

University of Oxford

 

As we all know, Santa Claus is a good and benevolent old chap: he brings presents and tries the best he can to fulfil children’s wishes. But he is also fair: he only brings presents to those who have been good, and coal to the naughty ones. He makes the rules, and you have to play by his rules: you better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, and, well, you know why.

Because no one has ever seen him, many people think that Santa Claus does not exist. But many, many others think that he does. In the US, for example, 85% of 5 year old children believe that Santa Claus exists, and the belief remains quite strong up to the age of 8. In the UK, 92% of children 8 years old or younger believe in Father Christmas – he’s still Santa, by a different name -, at least as reported by their parents (this datum might be a bit inflated by the fact that some children do not want their parents to find out that they – the children – have stopped believing, so they keep their parents’ illusions alive for as long as possible).Read More »Should we Believe in Santa Claus?

Against Conscientious Objection In Health Care: A Counterdeclaration And Reply To Oderberg

Alberto Giubilini (Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, University of Oxford) and

Julian Savulescu (Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford)

Conscientious objection in health care – that is, healthcare practitioners objecting to performing certain legal, safe, and beneficial medical procedures (e.g. abortion) that a patient requests by appealing to their personal moral values – is one of the most debated topics in medical ethics at present time. Although at the moment doctors’ private conscience enjoys a lot of legal protection – most laws that make abortion legal contain clauses that exempt doctors from performing the procedure if they so wish. We have provided reasons, both in this forum and in our academic work, for why we think that conscientious objection in health care is not morally permissible and should not be allowed in the case of procedures that are legal, safe, beneficial, autonomously requested by patients and, more generally, consistent with the standards of good medical practice (see e.g. Savulescu 2006, Savulescu and Schuklenk 2017, Giubilini 2014, Giubilini 2017). Some people disagree and advance reasons for the opposite view. One of the scholars who has more clearly and straightforwardly articulated the principles and reasons in support of conscientious objection in health care is Professor Oderberg of Reading University. Prof Oderberg was recently invited to debate the issue with Julian Savulescu at the Masters Course in Practical Ethics run by the Uehiro Centre here at the University of Oxford. On that occasion, Prof Oderberg’s defense of conscientious objection centred around a series of principles and considerations that he very effectively formulated in the 17 main points that constitute his “Declaration in support of conscientious objection in health care”, published on the University of Reading website and which is available for people who agree with him to sign.Read More »Against Conscientious Objection In Health Care: A Counterdeclaration And Reply To Oderberg