Pandemic Ethics
Pandemic ethics considers the challenges raised by acute infectious disease outbreaks on the social, economic, and health of individuals and communities. How do we balance competing interests of health, security, and human freedoms? Purely utilitarian calculations of net benefit are fraught with difficult assessments of happiness. Whose happiness? Whose justice and which rationality? How do […]
Ethical issues in pandemic influenza planning
Background A number of challenging ethical issues are raised by a potential influenza pandemic. Ethical concerns associated with the planning, preparedness and responses to future pandemics are important to consider, ensuring that response efforts are not hindered in the event of a pandemic. These include: priority of access to healthcare resources with increased demand and […]