Juvenile Justice: Why It Is Ethical to Vaccinate Our Children Now
by Kyle Ferguson, Ph.D., and Arthur Caplan, Ph.D. On May 10, 2021, the F.D.A. authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for use in 12- to 15-year-olds. The C.D.C.’s A.C.I.P. convened on May 12th to review clinical trial data and unanimously voted to recommend using the vaccine in this cohort. As a result, young teens started getting their shots and the protection we owe them. By getting vaccinated, these youths will help our nation achieve valuable collective goals. We think this is welcome news.… (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - May 25, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Arthur Caplan Tags: COVID-19 pandemic Ethics Featured Posts Global Ethics Pediatrics Vaccines Covid-19 vaccine Source Type: blogs

Interrupting the Medical Ableism Feedback Loop
by Joseph Stramondo, PhD The COVID-19 pandemic reveals systemic health inequities in ways that are hard to ignore.  These inequities tracked race, class, and several other overlapping and interlocking oppressions, including ableism. Ableism roughly refers to an ideology that disrespects and unjustly disadvantages disabled people on account of their disability.  Ableism can appear in the attitudes and beliefs of individual people or it can be “baked in” to a system of institutions and practices.   Systemic ableism was most apparent early on in the pandemic, in the way cris...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - May 19, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Disability Featured Posts Health Disparities Justice ableism Disability, Chronic Conditions and Rehabilitation social determinants of health Social Justice Source Type: blogs

Overturning National Eviction Bans is Institutionalized Racism and Sexism
 by Keisha Ray, PhD One of the social determinants of health is housing. Although in my work I discuss all of the social determinants of health, I tend to focus on the importance of housing because where we live, our zip code, with whom we live, the country, state, and city we live in can tell us a lot about people’s access to healthy food, recreation areas, clean water and air, and public transportation. Where a person lives can also tell us about their proximity to crime, environmental toxins (e.g. landfills, etc), which are al...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - May 5, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Keisha Ray Tags: Featured Posts Gender Disparities Health Disparities Politics Public Health Race Source Type: blogs

Why it is Important to Call Out Racist Language Amongst Our Professional Peers
by Mildred Cho, PhD Recently, on a panel at a conference of a medical professional society, the president of the society used a racist term that is an ethnic slur used to refer to Asians. The speaker did not publicly apologize but did resign from official duties of the society. Other leaders of the society issued a series of underwhelming apologies, the final one asking for “tolerance”. This request puzzled me. Did it mean there should not be harsh consequences for using a racist term in a professional setting?… (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - May 5, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Ethics Featured Posts Professionalism Race Source Type: blogs

Vaccine Passports: Alleviate Stranger Danger!
by Brian M Cummings M.D.  and John J. Paris S.J.        Vaccine passports are likely to become a necessary part of our lives until we achieve herd immunity and no longer need worry about contracting a potentially life-threatening virus from strangers. Such ‘passports’ might not be the first item on our wish list.  But the arguments for their use are basic and compelling. As Gostin and colleagues’ recent article notes, vaccine passports encourage people to be vaccinated and allow a reopening of the economy.  … (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - May 3, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: John Paris Tags: COVID-19 pandemic Featured Posts Health Policy & Insurance Health Regulation & Law Vaccines Vaccine Passport Source Type: blogs

On The Wrong Track: The Societal Risks of Ending Religious Exemptions
by Anne Zimmerman, JD, MS Vaccination hesitancy calls for a social sciences approach, not merely a public health data driven solution, nor necessarily a legal one. Nonmedical costs of eliminating religious exemptions should be considered. Ending religious exemptions risks increasing rights extremism and suffering its societal effect on all other public policies. By bringing those who are fighting to preserve the religious exemption into the discussion, a unified approach or compromise may be possible. Alienating them may cause more harm than good.… (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - April 29, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Anne Zimmerman Tags: Featured Posts Public Health Vaccines COVID-19 Covid-19 vaccine Source Type: blogs

How The Pandemic Can Help Fix Maternity Care in the United States
by Raymond DeVires, PhD and Eugene Declercq, PhD The COVID crisis is shining a light on the way we organize our lives together, exposing inequalities and inefficiencies that, until now, were hiding in plain sight.  Because of the changes forced on us by COVID-19, we have begun to question many aspects of our lives, including where we work, how we provide education, and how we deliver health care.    One prominent story is the plight of women anguishing over the question of where they should birth their b...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - April 28, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Birthing Featured Posts Health Care Maternity Care Source Type: blogs

Baring the Essentials
by Arthur Caplan, PhD Do Americans have any real sense of what it means to be an ‘essential’, worker who therefore should be first in line for Covid vaccinations?  The answer, based on the rocky rollout of vaccines in different states, is we don’t have a clue. There has been a good deal of handwringing and sniping about constant cheating clouding America’s vaccine rollout.  As vaccine access was expanded beyond the elderly and the health care workforce to include ‘essential workers’ stories appeared of people lying about their age, medical status, citizenship, residency, occupation and working c...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - April 26, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Arthur Caplan Tags: Ethics Featured Posts Justice COVID-19 Covid-19 vaccine Source Type: blogs

Umbilical Hernias: Systemic Racism, Dogma, And Pediatric Surgery
by Stephanie Preston, MD In the health professions, we have all been taught that some of the most common, chronic, and debilitating diseases in the United States – hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, and most cancers – disproportionately affect Black Americans. As resident surgeons, dogma holds that umbilical hernias are more prevalent in Black children, but without any discussion about underlying drivers. There is no evidence to support that this disparity is related to biologic or genetic differences. However, a recently published study continues to state that umbilical hernias are 8-9x more prevalent among Bla...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - April 13, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Children/Adolescents Ethics Featured Posts Health Care Health Disparities Pediatrics Source Type: blogs

Delaying Vaccine Dosages Is More Than Risky, It ’s Unethical
by Elisheva “Eli” Nemetz, BA, MBE The field of bioethics emerged as a result of the atrocities attested to in the Nuremberg Trials and the inhumanity of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. People were a means to an end, and perverted minds engaged in medical experimentation on vulnerable individuals. These barbaric and sadistic ‘projects’ led to critical changes like the Nuremberg Code, which stated that voluntary consent from participants is essential for research (The Nuremberg Code, 1947). Over time we have absorbed these lessons and applied them.… (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - April 9, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Clinical Ethics Featured Posts Public Health Research Ethics Vaccines COVID-19 Covid-19 vaccine Source Type: blogs

AJOB ’s Acceptance Rate
Bela Fishbeyn, MS and David Magnus, PhD Our publishers recently changed how they present journal metrics on Taylor & Francis Online. Each journal in their portfolio now features a new metrics tab on every journals’ home page that includes information about citation metrics, usage (downloads), speed (average days from submission to first decision, average days from acceptance to online publication, etc), and acceptance rate.  The information was added in the hopes of empowering researchers and authors to make informed decisions by providing a broader range of metrics and clear information for their use.R...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - April 2, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Bela Fishbeyn Tags: Uncategorized AJOB Journal Metrics Source Type: blogs

Patriotism, Rights, and Vaccination
Anne Zimmerman, JD, MS By suggesting a lack of education or a failure to digest vaccination science, the public health officials and media miss a crucial point. Many people who do not want to accept a vaccine speak about liberty, and in the case of mandatory vaccination or vaccination as a condition of participation, bodily intrusion coerced by government. In February, 56 percent of white Republicans surveyed were unsure or planned to refuse vaccination. Their arguments are steeped in patriotism, loyalty to a bill of rights (albeit one that imagines no limits on those rights) and being American.  … (Sou...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - April 2, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: COVID-19 pandemic Cultural Featured Posts Justice Politics Uncategorized Vaccines Source Type: blogs

AstaZeneca ’s Vaccine Ethical Problem
Brian M. Cummings, MD and John J. Paris, SJ, PhD In The New York Times, almost overlooked amidst multiple articles on Covid-19 published that day, we found a challenging essay by Max Fisher entitled, “Europe’s Vaccine Ethics Call:  Do No Harm and Let More Die”?  Fisher inquires whether clinical bioethics should accept the decision of Germany to suspend the use of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine due to blood clots because of what bioethicists label “The Trolley Problem”.   The ‘ Trolley Problem’ is a thought experiment designed to describe a decision-making pr...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - March 29, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Clinical Trials & Studies COVID-19 pandemic Decision making Featured Posts Global Ethics Pharmaceuticals Vaccines AstraZeneca Trolley Problem Source Type: blogs

Immortal Surgeon General: C. Everett Koop, 40 years on
In this age of radical political polarization, it’s good to be reminded of a man whom Reagan hired to please the social conservatives, yet whose 90th birthday party was hosted by Hillary Clinton. (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - March 27, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Children/Adolescents Clinical Ethics Cultural Featured Posts Health Policy & Insurance Health Regulation & Law HIV/AIDS Politics Public Health C Everett Koop surgeon general Source Type: blogs

What is Medicine to do?: Righting Past And Present Abuses Against People of Color
By Keisha Ray, PhD  I have been interviewed by many journalists who are writing articles about the COVID-19 vaccines and Black people. Most of the interviews are very similar; journalists want to know how do medicine’s and public health’s past abuses of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people affect their willingness to trust medicine and get vaccinated against COVID-19. After making it clear that it is not people of color (POC) that need to work on their trust of medicine but that it is medicine who needs to work on its ability to be trusted, I tell journalis...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - March 21, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Keisha Ray Tags: Ethics Featured Posts Justice Public Health Race Social Justice Vulnerable Populations Source Type: blogs