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  • The Duty To Ignore Covid-19

    By Charles Foster This is a plea for a self-denying ordinance on the part of philosophers. Ignore Covid-19. It was important that you said what you have said about it, but the job is done. There is nothing more to say. And there are great dangers in continuing to comment. It gives the impression that…

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  • Guest Post: A Relentless Focus on the Given – Reviewing O. Carter Snead’s What it Means to be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics

    Guest Post by Charles Camosy Professor Carter Snead, at least in my world, is about as important a contemporary voice in bioethics that we have today. A professor on Notre Dame’s law faculty, he is perhaps better known as director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture—one of the most significant positions in the United…

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  • Announcement: 7th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics

    Graduate and undergraduate students currently enrolled at the University of Oxford in any subject are invited to enter the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics by submitting an essay of up to 2000 words on any topic relevant to practical ethics.  Eligibility includes visiting students who are registered as recognized students, and paying fees, but…

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  • Press Release: UK Approves COVID-19 Challenge Studies

    Responses to the UK COVID-19 Challenge Studies:  “In a pandemic, time is lives.  So far, over a million people have died. “There is a moral imperative to develop to a safe and effective vaccine – and to do so as quickly as possible.  Challenge studies are one way of accelerating vaccine research.  They are ethical…

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  • 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…

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  • 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 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…

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  • 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…

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  • Coronavirus: Why I Support the World’s First COVID Vaccine Challenge Trial

    Lesterman/Shutterstock Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford Two months ago I received an email from a colleague inviting me to join a global campaign to support a form of vaccine research that would involve deliberately infecting volunteers with COVID-19. This might seem like a strange idea. Some people have raised concerns about this research. Some even…

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  • Video Series: Covid-19 Who Should Be Vaccinated First?

    After healthcare and some other essential workers, it might seem the most obvious candidates for a Covid-19 vaccine (if we have one) are the elderly and other groups that are more vulnerable to the virus. But Alberto Giubilini argues that prioritising children may be a better option as this could maximise the benefits of indirect…

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