Written by Stephen Rainey
An excitingly futuristic world of seamless interaction with computers! A cybernetic environment that delivers what I want, when I want it! Or: A world of built on vampiric databases, fed on myopic accounts of movements and preferences, loosely related to persons. Each is a possibility given ubiquitous ambient intelligence.Read More »Ambient Intelligence
Written by Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, University of Cambridge; Christelle Langley, University of Cambridge,
and Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford
As more and more people get vaccinated, some governments are relying on “vaccine passports” as a way of reopening society. These passports are essentially certificates that show the holder has been immunised against COVID-19, which restaurants, pubs, bars, sports venues and others can use to grant them entry.
Israel currently operates a “green pass” system, which allows vaccinated people access to theatres, concert halls, indoor restaurants and bars. The UK government, had to roll back plans to trial vaccine passports after some of the venues involved experienced significant backlash against the proposals.
This is perhaps not surprising – vaccine passport schemes are controversial, with some arguing that they will reinforce inequalities. But there is an ethical case for using some form of certification of COVID status, as long as it is designed properly and as long as everyone has access to vaccines.
Let’s look at the ethics of vaccination and certification.Read More »Cross Post: Vaccine passports: why they are good for society
Written by Doug McConnell
A jury recently acquitted several activists charged with causing £25,000 worth of damage to Shell’s HQ in London despite the defendants admitting that they caused the damage and the judge informing the jury that the defendants had no legal defence. In other words, if the law were applied correctly, the jury had no choice but to find them guilty. When juries deviate from the law and “go rogue” like this, it is known as “nullification”. But when, if ever, should juries behave in this way?Read More »A Juror’s Guide to Going Rogue
By Alberto Giubilini (University of Oxford) and
Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford University)
crosspost with Lockdown Sceptics
[Prof Jay Bhattacharya (Professor of Medicine, Stanford University) and I collaborate on Collateral Global, a new project that aims to evaluate the impact of lockdowns and other pandemic restrictions. We have the same view on lockdown and pandemic restrictions, but we do have our own internal, healthy disagreement. Most people who are skeptical and critical of lockdowns (as both Prof Bhattacharya and I are) are also against immunity passports (as he is), often for the same reasons. I disagree on this point and I think some form of immunity passport should be introduced. In this exchange published on Lockdown Sceptics, we try to explore exactly where our disagreement lies and try to identify possible areas of agreement on the matter. AG]
by Alberto Giubilini
Having read the excellent piece in the Wall St Journal by Prof. Bhattacharya and Prof. Kulldorff, I have the impression that they take many of the reasons against lockdowns to also be reasons against immunity passports. Among these, individual liberty is prominent.
I disagree.
Read More »Crosspost: Immunity Passports: A Debate Between Jay Bhattacharya and Alberto Giubilini
By Charles Foster
A couple of lockdown conversations:
And a lockdown fact: Lockdown has been great for book sales. 2020 saw an estimated rise of 5.2% in volume sales of print books in the UK compared with 2019 sales. This was the biggest annual rise since 2007: Read More »Lockdown Erodes Agency
Written by Owen Schaefer and Julian Savulescu
This is an updated cross-post of an article published in MediCine
On 2 February 2021, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, issues a broadside against COVID-19 vaccine nationalism, calling it “morally indefensible” and “tantamount to medical malpractice at a global scale.” Rich countries representing 16% of the global population have snapped up 60% of the global supply of COVID-19 vaccines. [1] Meanwhile, India, which has only vaccinated 10% of its population, is facing a catastrophic COVID-19 surge.[2] And the COVAX facility – an international effort to get COVID-19 vaccines equitably distributed around the world – currently only projects capacity to offer vaccines amounting to about 3% of participating countries’ populations by mid-year.[3]
COVID-19 vaccine nationalism is not the exception to normal practice. In almost all matters, countries spend the vast majority of budgets on local needs, and only a small fraction of that foreign aid, even when the latter represents much greater need. But the fact that this is normal or expected does not amount to a moral defense.
Here, we explore a question of practical ethics: what is the appropriate extent to which a country can prioritize its own people over those in other countries in the securing of vaccines for COVID-19?
Written by Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu
There are two situations when a general anaesthetic might be used in dying patients. The first is when other drugs have not worked and the patient is still distressed or in pain. The second is when a patient has only a short time to live and expresses a clear wish to be unconscious. Some dying patients just want to sleep.Read More »Cross Post: End-of-Life Care: People Should Have the Option of General Anaesthesia as They Die
Written by Neil Levy
Unsurprisingly, I’m a big believer in universities and higher education. I think research, of all kinds, is important for a whole range of reasons and that being educated is very often conducive to a good life. But we shouldn’t pretend that universities are institutions wholeheartedly devoted to genuine education and to research. They’re also businesses, and their business motivations often play a more important role in their decisions than any academic considerations. Beyond that, they play a role in society that’s independent of their role as educators, and that role explains some of their grubbier behavior.Read More »Making Universities (Even) More Unfair
Written by Maximilian Kiener, University of Oxford
When the doctor realised that he wouldn’t be able to dissuade her of her beliefs, he decided to present her with another one:
Have you considered the possibility that anti-vaccine propaganda could be an attempt by the Russians or the Chinese to weaken the health of the United States population?
The doctor deliberately deceived the woman and probably reinforced her belief in conspiracy theories by pretending to find them plausible himself. But the tactic worked. The mother consented to have her child vaccinated.
Right now, vaccination is key to overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic and regaining safe individual freedom. Yet a minority of people, like the woman in our example, still refuse vaccination on mistaken beliefs. But how far can we go to change their minds?
Would the doctor be justified in using similar tactics to make the woman consent to her own COVID-19 vaccination?Read More »Cross Post: COVID: Is it OK to manipulate people into getting vaccinated?
by Dominic Wilkinson @Neonatalethics
Our paper General anaesthesia in end-of-life care: extending the indications for anaesthesia beyond surgery has been published today in Anaesthesia. It is part of a series of work led by researcher Antony Takla, together with Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson. The recent paper is a collaboration with Professor Jaideep Pandit, Professor of Anaesthesia at Oxford.
