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Jonny Pugh’s Posts

Vaccines and Ventilators: Need, Outcome or a Right to a Fair Go?

Written by Julian Savulescu and Jonathan Pugh

The current UK approach to allocating limited life-saving resources is on the basis of need. Guidance issued by The General Medical Council states that all doctors must “Make sure that decisions about setting priorities that affect patients are fair and based on clinical need and the likely effectiveness of treatments”

This is most vividly illustrated in the JCVI’s strategy for vaccination: the prioritization order recommended by JVIC and that the UK Government is intentioned to follow is:

“1. older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers

  1. all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers
  2. all those 75 years of age and over”

and then younger age groups in descending order.

The aim of this scheme is to address the greatest need and possibly also to save the greatest number of lives. Indeed, the JCVI state that their priority groups represent 99% of preventable mortality from COVID-19.[1] The downside of this strategy is that people in each lower tier will predictably and avoidably die as they wait for the tier above to be vaccinated.

Read More »Vaccines and Ventilators: Need, Outcome or a Right to a Fair Go?

Even Though Mass Testing For COVID Isn’t Always Accurate, It Could Still Be Useful – Here’s Why

By Jonathan Pugh

This article was originally published here by the Conversation, on 22nd Dec 2020

 

The mass testing of asymptomatic people for COVID-19 in the UK was thrown into question by a recent study. In a pilot in Liverpool, over half the cases weren’t picked up, leading some to question whether using tests that perform poorly is the best use of resources.

The tests involved in this study were antigen tests. These see whether someone is infected with SARS-CoV-2 by identifying structures on the outside of the virus, known as antigens, using antibodies. If the coronavirus is present in a sample, the antibodies in the test bind with the virus’s antigens and highlight an infection.

Antigen tests are cheap and provide results quickly. However, they are not always accurate. But what do we mean when we say that a test is inaccurate? And is it really the case that “an unreliable test is worse than no test”?Read More »Even Though Mass Testing For COVID Isn’t Always Accurate, It Could Still Be Useful – Here’s Why

Pandemic Ethics: Compulsory treatment or vaccination versus quarantine

By Thomas Douglas, Jonathan Pugh and Lisa Forsberg

Governments worldwide have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic with sweeping constraints on freedom of movement, including various forms of isolation, quarantine, and ‘lockdown’. Governments have also introduced new legal instruments to guarantee the lawfulness of their measures. In the UK, the Coronavirus Act 2020 gives the government new powers to detain individuals in order to prevent them from infecting others.

Interestingly, one measure that recent legislative changes in the UK leave off the table, at least for the time being, is the use of compulsory medical interventions—whether treatments or vaccinations. We surmise, however, that once treatments or vaccines for Covid-19 become available, there will be political interest in making them mandatory, since this may allow for the quickest and safest route out of the lockdown. In the case of vaccines, there will be a need to ensure that enough people are vaccinated to confer herd immunity. There may also be an argument for mandating vaccination of people who have contact with many others, such as teachers, retail staff and health care workers. In the case of treatments, we might hope that widespread use of anti-viral therapies will lighten the burden on the NHS by reducing the number of infected individuals who require intensive care. And there may be a need to ensure that people take the treatment even after their symptoms have resolved, to reduce their infectiousness.

From a legal point of view, there are clear barriers to compulsory treatments and vaccinations in the UK. The right of individuals with decision-making capacity to refuse any medical intervention that involves interference with their bodies is, for instance, robust and well-established in English law. This right persists even when the individual’s reasons for refusing the intervention are bizarre, irrational, or non-existent, and when the refusal would certainly lead to her death. The individual’s right to make her own medical decisions, and in particular to refuse interventions that interfere with her body, also enjoys robust protection in human rights law.
Read More »Pandemic Ethics: Compulsory treatment or vaccination versus quarantine

Pandemic Ethics: Infectious Pathogen Control Measures and Moral Philosophy

By Jonathan Pugh and Tom Douglas

Listen to Jonathan Pugh and Tom Douglas on Philosophical Disquisitions  discussing  Covid 19 and the Ethics of Infectious Disease Control, a podcast interview that was inspired by this blog.

Following the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, a number of jurisdictions have implemented restrictive measures to prevent the spread of this highly contagious pathogen. In January, Chinese authorities effectively quarantined the entire city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, which has a population of around 11 million people. There has since been much discussion of various measures that might be implemented now or in the future to counter the spread, including various forms of social distancing, further mass quarantines and lockdowns, closed borders, mandatory testing and screening and even potentially forced treatment.

There are important questions about the lawfulness of infectious pathogen control (IPC) measures. Here, though, we focus on the moral justification of IPC. How can moral philosophy help us to think through when and whether different IPC measures ought to be employed?

To do so, we will briefly summarise our analysis of the different ways non-consensual medical interventions can be justified in infectious diseases control and criminal justice settings, which we originally published open access here.

 

Read More »Pandemic Ethics: Infectious Pathogen Control Measures and Moral Philosophy

Dr Neil Armstrong – Why is Mental Healthcare so Ethically Confusing

Co-authored with Daniel D’Hotman de Villiers

In the first St. Cross seminar of the term, Dr. Neil Armstrong talked about ethical challenges raised by mounting bureaucratic processes in the institutional provision of mental healthcare. Drawing on vignettes from his ethnographic fieldwork, Dr. Armstrong argued that the bureaucratization of mental healthcare has led to a situation in which the provision of care involves conflicts of the sort that make it irretrievably morally confusing. The podcast will follow shortly here.

Read More »Dr Neil Armstrong – Why is Mental Healthcare so Ethically Confusing

Elizabeth Anderson’s Uehiro Lectures: Lecture 3 – Communicating Moral Concern Beyond Blaming and Shaming

In Elizabeth Anderson’s final Uehiro lecture, she tackles what she takes to be the hardest problem facing our current political discourse – How can we overcome obstacles to communicating moral concerns in order to orient policy to important values (such as public health and justice)? This is a particularly difficult and intractable problem because it concerns our moral values; in overcoming this obstacle, there is thus a considerable degree of scope for disagreement, and judgments of the moral character of others based on their moral opinions. Over the course of the lecture, Anderson refines the diagnosis of this problem, and once again expresses optimism about overcoming the obstacles she highlights. This time she outlines how we might disarm the fear, resentment, pride, and contempt that is currently derailing our political discourse, and the virtues that we must develop to do so. You can find a recording of the lecture here.

Read More »Elizabeth Anderson’s Uehiro Lectures: Lecture 3 – Communicating Moral Concern Beyond Blaming and Shaming

Prof. Elizabeth Anderson’s Uehiro Lectures: Lecture 2 Summary – “Improving Political Discourse (1): Re-learning how to talk about facts across group identities”

Prof. Elizabeth Anderson’s second Uehiro lecture focuses on how we can overcome obstacles to fact-based political discourse. In particular, the lecture concerns how we might prevent identity-expressive discourse (a term introduced in the first lecture; see summary of lecture 1 below) from displacing the discussion of facts and evidence in public discourse, and how we might overcome the shameless lying and disinformation campaigns of populist populations. Over the course of the lecture, Anderson illustrates her analysis with illuminating cases studies, and finishes by providing her own solutions to the problem at hand, drawing on Cultural Cognition theory, John Dewey’s cultural conception of democracy, and emerging data from deliberative polling studies. You can find a recording of the lecture here

Read More »Prof. Elizabeth Anderson’s Uehiro Lectures: Lecture 2 Summary – “Improving Political Discourse (1): Re-learning how to talk about facts across group identities”

Elizabeth Anderson’s Uehiro Lecture Summary: “Can We Talk – Communicating Moral Concern In An Era of Polarized Politics” – Lecture 1: What Has Gone Wrong?

It is something of an understatement to suggest that we are living through turbulent times. Society today is characterised not just by deep divisions about how to address key social challenges of our time, but also on the emphasis that should be placed on evidence-based discussion of these issues, and the moral values that should guide national policies.

In this context, Elizabeth Anderson’s Uehiro lecture series, entitled ““Can We Talk – Communicating Moral Concern In An Era of Polarized Politics” could not be more timely. In the first of this three lecture series, Anderson offers a diagnosis of the problems that currently bedevil political discourse across the world. This first lecture sets the stage for the following two lectures in which she shall offer her own proposed solutions to the problems that she so vividly describes and analyses in this fascinating initial lecture. The remainder of this post shall briefly summarise the key points of the lecture – You can find a recording of the lecture here

Read More »Elizabeth Anderson’s Uehiro Lecture Summary: “Can We Talk – Communicating Moral Concern In An Era of Polarized Politics” – Lecture 1: What Has Gone Wrong?

Reversibility, Colds, and Neurosurgery

By Jonny Pugh

This blog was originally published on the Journal of Medical Ethics Blog

 

Happy new year to readers of the blog!

I always approach the new year with some trepidation. This is not just due to the terrible weather, or even my resolution to take more exercise (unfortunately in the aforementioned terrible weather). Instead, I approach January with a sense of dread because it is always when I seem to come down with the common cold.

In my recent research, I have been interested in the nature and moral significance of reversibility, and the common cold is an interesting case study of this concept. In this blog, I will use this example to very briefly preview a couple of points that I make in a forthcoming open access article about reversibility in the context of psychiatric neurosurgery. You can read the open access paper here.

Read More »Reversibility, Colds, and Neurosurgery

Gene-Editing Mosquitoes at The European Youth Event 2018

By Jonathan Pugh

 

The below is a slightly extended version of my two 5min presentations at the European Youth Event 2018, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. I was asked to present on the following questions:

 

  1. What are the ethical issues surrounding gene-editing, particularly with respect to eradicating mosquitoes?

 

  1. Should the EU legislate on gene-editing mosquitoes?

 

Read More »Gene-Editing Mosquitoes at The European Youth Event 2018