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  • Congratulations to our Winners and Runners up in the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2020

    Please join us in congratulating all of the finalists in this unique final for the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics, and in particular our winners, Eric Sheng and Maya Krishnan. In an Oxford Uehiro Centre first the 6th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics was held as a Zoom webinar event. The Finalists in each…

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  • Cross Post: Coronavirus: The Conversation We Should Have With Our Loved Ones Now – Leading Medic

    Written by Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford This article was originally published on The Conversation Waiting is never easy. Sometimes the period when you know that something bad is coming is almost harder than when it finally arrives. Across the health service, there is an enormous and unprecedented effort underway to prepare for the coming…

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  • Pandemic ethics: Never again – will we make Covid-19 a warning shot or a dud?

    by Anders Sandberg The Covid-19 pandemic is not the end of the world. But it certainly is a wake-up call. When we look back on the current situation in a year’s time, will we collectively learn the right lessons or instead quickly forget like we did with the 1918 flu? Or even think it was…

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  • Coronavirus: Dark Clouds, But Some Silver Linings?

    By Charles Foster Cross posted from The Conversation To be clear, and in the hope of heading off some trolls, two observations. First: of course I don’t welcome the epidemic. It will cause death, worry, inconvenience and great physical and economic suffering. Lives and livelihoods will be destroyed. The burden will fall disproportionately on the…

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  • 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…

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  • Pandemic Ethics: How Much Risk Should Social Care Workers and Their Families Be Expected to Take?

    By Doug McConnell Recently many of the staff at an aged-care home in Sydney, Australia called in sick the day after the report of a CoVid-19 outbreak at that facility.1 Upon investigation of these absences, one of the reasons the workers gave was that they were concerned about protecting their own families. They didn’t want…

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  • Pandemic Ethics: the Unilateralist Curse and Covid-19, or Why You Should Stay Home

    by Anders Sandberg In Scientific American Zeynep Tufekci writes: Preparing for the almost inevitable global spread of this virus, … , is one of the most pro-social, altruistic things you can do in response to potential disruptions of this kind. We should prepare, not because we may feel personally at risk, but so that we…

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  • Cross Post: Climate change: How do I cope with inevitable decline?

    Written by Neil Levy Originally published in The Conversation I recently watched an interview with David Attenborough, in which he was asked whether there is hope that things can get better for our planet. He replied that we can only slow down the rate at which things get worse. It seems to me that this…

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