Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Community Beneficence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Community Beneficence. Show all posts

Friday, August 13, 2021

Moral dilemmas and trust in leaders during a global health crisis

Everett, J.A.C., Colombatto, C., Awad, E. et al. 
Nat Hum Behav (2021). 

Abstract

Trust in leaders is central to citizen compliance with public policies. One potential determinant of trust is how leaders resolve conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles in moral dilemmas. Past research suggests that utilitarian responses to dilemmas can both erode and enhance trust in leaders: sacrificing some people to save many others (‘instrumental harm’) reduces trust, while maximizing the welfare of everyone equally (‘impartial beneficence’) may increase trust. In a multi-site experiment spanning 22 countries on six continents, participants (N = 23,929) completed self-report (N = 17,591) and behavioural (N = 12,638) measures of trust in leaders who endorsed utilitarian or non-utilitarian principles in dilemmas concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Across both the self-report and behavioural measures, endorsement of instrumental harm decreased trust, while endorsement of impartial beneficence increased trust. These results show how support for different ethical principles can impact trust in leaders, and inform effective public communication during times of global crisis.

Discussion

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a number of moral dilemmas that engender conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles. Building on past work on utilitarianism and trust, we tested the hypothesis that endorsement of utilitarian solutions to pandemic dilemmas would impact trust in leaders. Specifically, in line with suggestions from previous work and case studies of public communications during the early stages of the pandemic, we predicted that endorsing instrumental harm would decrease trust in leaders, while endorsing impartial beneficence would increase trust.

Thursday, July 16, 2020

At Stake in Reopening Schools: ‘The Future of the Country’

Matt Peterson
barrons.com
Originally posted 10 July 20

Here is an excerpt:

We do have to think about this longer-term. We also have to think about it from an ethics standpoint, acknowledging the following. At least right now, the primary motivation behind closing schools—having children not be educated in school buildings—is because of a belief that keeping schools physically open with children congregating poses a risk to community transmission. Either to teachers directly or back to households and the wider community. Whether it’s bad for kids themselves or how risky it is for kids themselves remains an open question. We’re worried about multisymptom inflammatory syndrome. But at least, right now, the evidence continues to suggest children are not themselves a particularly high risk group for serious Covid disease.

From an ethics point of view, when one group is being burdened primarily to benefit other groups, that puts a very special onus on justifying that it is ethically OK. If we conclude it is the right thing to do ethically because of what’s at stake for the community, we have both to make sure that it’s justified, this disproportionate burden on children, and that we do everything we can to mitigate those burdens.

The info is here.

Thursday, April 2, 2020

Social Distancing as a Moral Dilemma

E. Litvack
U. A. News
Originally posted 31 March 20

Here is an excerpt:

Q: At this point, is social distancing a moral imperative?

This is an interesting philosophical question. A moral imperative is a command to act in a certain way, which everyone should follow, and, in order to invoke one, we need to explain what makes a particular action right or morally good.

A: In the context of the current health crisis, we can plausibly make the claim that it is a morally good state of affairs if we save the greatest number of lives possible. Not everyone would agree with that claim, but I'll leave that argument aside for now and return to it later. For now, let's assume that promoting health and saving lives is a morally good goal for society. Given that premise – if we also accept the empirical evidence, which suggests that social distancing is a means to halt the spread of the virus – it's easy to see how one would defend their judgment that it is morally wrong not to practice social distancing.

Q: How might someone argue that saving lives isn't a moral imperative?

A: Some people might argue that there is a naturalistic and evolutionary reason to let the virus take its course. It would reduce human population, which, in the long run, could be a good thing in terms of having more resources for fewer people. Notice one thing this view entails, though: The person who holds it must be willing to accept that they or their loved ones might be among those who contribute to the population reduction.

Likewise, some might argue that certain people have more value than others and therefore deserve to live while others do not. This would require a set of criteria by which to judge the value of a life, and unless someone – or some entity – creates that criteria by fiat, then to define "a valuable life" requires us to circle right back around to our original premise.

The info is here.

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Our moral instincts don’t match this crisis

Yascha Mounk
The Atlantic
Originally posted March 19, 2020

Here is an excerpt:

There are at least three straightforward explanations.

The first has to do with simple ignorance. For those of us who have spent the past weeks obsessing about every last headline regarding the evolution of the crisis, it can be easy to forget that many of our fellow citizens simply don’t follow the news with the same regularity—or that they tune into radio shows and television networks that have, shamefully, been downplaying the extent of the public-health emergency. People crowding into restaurants or hanging out in big groups, then, may simply fail to realize the severity of the pandemic. Their sin is honest ignorance.

The second explanation has to do with selfishness. Going out for trivial reasons imposes a real risk on those who will likely die if they contract the disease. Though the coronavirus does kill some young people, preliminary data from China and Italy suggest that they are, on average, less strongly affected by it. For those who are far more likely to survive, it is—from a purely selfish perspective—less obviously irrational to chance such social encounters.

The third explanation has to do with the human tendency to make sacrifices for the suffering that is right in front of our eyes, but not the suffering that is distant or difficult to see.

The philosopher Peter Singer presented a simple thought experiment in a famous paper. If you went for a walk in a park, and saw a little girl drowning in a pond, you would likely feel that you should help her, even if you might ruin your fancy shirt. Most people recognize a moral obligation to help another at relatively little cost to themselves.

Then Singer imagined a different scenario. What if a girl was in mortal danger halfway across the world, and you could save her by donating the same amount of money it would take to buy that fancy shirt? The moral obligation to help, he argued, would be the same: The life of the distant girl is just as important, and the cost to you just as small. And yet, most people would not feel the same obligation to intervene.

The same might apply in the time of COVID-19. Those refusing to stay home may not know the victims of their actions, even if they are geographically proximate, and might never find out about the terrible consequences of what they did. Distance makes them unjustifiably callous.

The info is here.

Friday, February 21, 2020

Why Google thinks we need to regulate AI

Sundar Pichai
ft.com
Originally posted 19 Jan 20

Here are two excerpts:

Yet history is full of examples of how technology’s virtues aren’t guaranteed. Internal combustion engines allowed people to travel beyond their own areas but also caused more accidents. The internet made it possible to connect with anyone and get information from anywhere, but also easier for misinformation to spread.

These lessons teach us that we need to be clear-eyed about what could go wrong. There are real concerns about the potential negative consequences of AI, from deepfakes to nefarious uses of facial recognition. While there is already some work being done to address these concerns, there will inevitably be more challenges ahead that no one company or industry can solve alone.

(cut)

But principles that remain on paper are meaningless. So we’ve also developed tools to put them into action, such as testing AI decisions for fairness and conducting independent human-rights assessments of new products. We have gone even further and made these tools and related open-source code widely available, which will empower others to use AI for good. We believe that any company developing new AI tools should also adopt guiding principles and rigorous review processes.

Government regulation will also play an important role. We don’t have to start from scratch. Existing rules such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation can serve as a strong foundation. Good regulatory frameworks will consider safety, explainability, fairness and accountability to ensure we develop the right tools in the right ways. Sensible regulation must also take a proportionate approach, balancing potential harms, especially in high-risk areas, with social opportunities.

Regulation can provide broad guidance while allowing for tailored implementation in different sectors. For some AI uses, such as regulated medical devices including AI-assisted heart monitors, existing frameworks are good starting points. For newer areas such as self-driving vehicles, governments will need to establish appropriate new rules that consider all relevant costs and benefits.


Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Veil-of-ignorance reasoning favors the greater good

Karen Huang, Joshua D. Greene and Max Bazerman
PNAS first published November 12, 2019
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1910125116

Abstract

The “veil of ignorance” is a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial decision-making by denying decision-makers access to potentially biasing information about who will benefit most or least from the available options. Veil-of-ignorance reasoning was originally applied by philosophers and economists to foundational questions concerning the overall organization of society. Here we apply veil-of-ignorance reasoning in a more focused way to specific moral dilemmas, all of which involve a tension between the greater good and competing moral concerns. Across six experiments (N = 5,785), three pre-registered, we find that veil-of-ignorance reasoning favors the greater good. Participants first engaged in veil-of-ignorance reasoning about a specific dilemma, asking themselves what they would want if they did not know who among those affected they would be. Participants then responded to a more conventional version of the same dilemma with a moral judgment, a policy preference, or an economic choice. Participants who first engaged in veil-of-ignorance reasoning subsequently made more utilitarian choices in response to a classic philosophical dilemma, a medical dilemma, a real donation decision between a more vs. less effective charity, and a policy decision concerning the social dilemma of autonomous vehicles. These effects depend on the impartial thinking induced by veil-of-ignorance reasoning and cannot be explained by a simple anchoring account, probabilistic reasoning, or generic perspective-taking. These studies indicate that veil-of-ignorance reasoning may be a useful tool for decision-makers who wish to make more impartial and/or socially beneficial choices.

Significance

The philosopher John Rawls aimed to identify fair governing principles by imagining people choosing their principles from behind a “veil of ignorance,” without knowing their places in the social order. Across 7 experiments with over 6,000 participants, we show that veil-of-ignorance reasoning leads to choices that favor the greater good. Veil-of-ignorance reasoning makes people more likely to donate to a more effective charity and to favor saving more lives in a bioethical dilemma. It also addresses the social dilemma of autonomous vehicles (AVs), aligning abstract approval of utilitarian AVs (which minimize total harm) with support for a utilitarian AV policy. These studies indicate that veil-of-ignorance reasoning may be used to promote decision making that is more impartial and socially beneficial.

Friday, December 21, 2018

Life on the slippery Earth



Sebastian Purcell
aeon.co
Originally posted July 3, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

At its core, Aztec virtue ethics has three main elements. One is a conception of the good life as the ‘rooted’ or worthwhile life. Second is the idea of right action as the mean or middle way. Third and final is the belief that virtue is a quality that’s fostered socially.

When I speak about the Aztecs – the people dominant in large parts of central America prior to the 16th-century Spanish conquest – even professional philosophers are often surprised to learn that the Aztecs were a philosophical culture. They’re even more startled to hear that we have (many volumes of) their texts recorded in their native language, Nahuatl. While a few of the pre-colonial hieroglyphic-type books survived the Spanish bonfires, our main sources of knowledge derive from records made by Catholic priests, up to the early 17th century. Using the Latin alphabet, these texts record the statements of tlamatinime, the indigenous philosophers, on matters as diverse as bird-flight patterns, moral virtue, and the structure of the cosmos.

To explain the Aztec conception of the good life, it’s helpful to begin in the sixth volume of a book called the Florentine Codex, compiled by Father Bernardino of Sahagún. Most of the text contains edifying discourses called huehuetlatolli, the elders’ discourses. This particular section records the speeches following the appointment of a new king, when the noblemen appear to compete for the most eloquent articulation of what an ideal monarch should be and do. The result is a succession of speeches like those in Plato’s Symposium, wherein each member tries to produce the most moving expression of praise.

The info is here.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Beyond the Boundaries: Ethical Issues in the Practice of Indirect Personality Assessment in Non-Health-Service Psychology

Marvin W. Acklin
Journal of Personality Assessment
https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2018.1522639

Abstract

This article focuses on ethical quandaries in the practice of indirect personality assessment in non-health-service psychology. Indirect personality assessment methods do not involve face-to-face interaction. Personality assessment at a distance is a methodological development of personality and social psychology, psychobiography, and psychohistory. Indirect personality methods are used in clinical, forensic, law enforcement, public safety, and national security settings. Psychology practice in non-health-service settings creates tensions between principles of beneficence and duty to society. This article defines methods of indirect personality assessment and some ethical ramifications. Their application in non-health-service settings occurs in the context of intense controversy over the ethics of psychologists’ participation in work settings where there are third-party loyalties, absence of voluntary informed consent, presence of nonstipulated harms, and absence of legal and ethical accountability. A hypothetical case example illustrates typical quandaries encountered in a national security assessment. This article provides a framework for critically examining ethical quandaries, a contemporary conceptual and process model for integrative moral cognition, and parameters for ethical reasoning by the individual practitioner under the exigencies of real-world practice.

Friday, September 7, 2018

23andMe's Pharma Deals Have Been the Plan All Along

Megan Molteni
www.wired.com
Originally posted August 3, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

So last week’s announcement that one of the world’s biggest drugmakers, GlaxoSmithKline, is gaining exclusive rights to mine 23andMe’s customer data for drug targets should come as no surprise. (Neither should GSK’s $300 million investment in the company). 23andMe has been sharing insights gleaned from consented customer data with GSK and at least six other pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms for the past three and a half years. And offering access to customer information in the service of science has been 23andMe’s business plan all along, as WIRED noted when it first began covering the company more than a decade ago.

But some customers were still surprised and angry, unaware of what they had already signed (and spat) away. GSK will receive the same kind of data pharma partners have generally received—summary level statistics that 23andMe scientists gather from analyses on de-identified, aggregate customer information—though it will have four years of exclusive rights to run analyses to discover new drug targets. Supporting this kind of translational work is why some customers signed up in the first place. But it’s clear the days of blind trust in the optimistic altruism of technology companies are coming to a close.

“I think we’re just operating now in a much more untrusting environment,” says Megan Allyse, a health policy researcher at the Mayo Clinic who studies emerging genetic technologies. “It’s no longer enough for companies to promise to make people healthy through the power of big data.”

The info is here.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Does Volk v. DeMeerleer Conflict with the AMA Code of Medical Ethics?

Jennifer L. Piel and Rejoice Opara
AMA Journal of Ethics. January 2018, Volume 20, Number 1: 10-18.

Abstract

A recent Washington State case revisits the obligation of mental health clinicians to protect third parties from the violent acts of their patients. Although the case of Volk v DeMeerleer raises multiple legal, ethical, and policy issues, this article will focus on a potential ethical conflict between the case law and professional guidelines, namely the American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics.

Here is a portion of the conclusion:

The Volk case established legal precedent for outpatient mental health clinicians in Washington State. Future cases against clinicians for their patients’ harm to third parties (e.g., medical negligence, wrongful death) will be tried under the Volk standard. It will be up to the trier of fact to determine whether the victims of a patient’s violence were foreseeable and, if so, whether the clinician acted reasonably to protect them.

Without changes to this law, there is increased likelihood that future clinicians and employers in similar situations, fearful of being in Dr. Ashby’s position, will more willingly (and likely unhelpfully) breach patient confidentiality. This creates a dilemma for clinicians in Washington State, who could find themselves caught between trying to meet the requirements of the legal case and also adhering to their professional ethical guidelines.

The article is here.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Did I just feed an addiction? Or ease a man’s pain? Welcome to modern medicine’s moral cage fight

Jay Baruch
STAT News
Originally published October 23, 2017

Here are two excerpts:

Will the opioid pills Sonny is asking for treat his pain, feed an addiction, or both? Will prescribing it fulfill my moral responsibility to alleviate his distress, contribute to the supply chain in the illicit pill economy, or both? Prescribing guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and recommendations from medical specialties and local hospitals are well-intentioned and necessary. But they do little to address the central anxiety that makes this decision a source of distress for physicians like me. It’s hard to evaluate pain without making some judgment about the patient and the patient’s story.

(cut)

A good story shortcuts analytical thinking. It can work its charms without our knowledge and sometimes against our better judgment. Once an emotional connection is made and the listener becomes invested in the story, the believability of the story matters less. In fact, the more extreme the story, the greater its capacity to enthrall the listener or reader.

Stories can elicit empathy and influence behavior in part by stimulating the release of the neurotransmitter oxytocin, which has ties to generosity, trustworthiness, and mother-infant bonding. I’m intrigued by the possibility that clinicians’ vulnerability to deceit is often grounded in the empathy they are reported to be lacking.

The article is here.

Monday, May 1, 2017

Is Healthcare a Right? A Privilege? Something Entirely Different?

Brian Joondeph
The Health Care Blog
Originally published April 8, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Most developed countries have parallel public and private healthcare systems. A public option covering everyone, with minimal or no out-of-pocket expense to patients, but with long wait times for care and limited treatment options. And a private option allowing individuals to purchase the healthcare or insurance they want and need, paying for it themselves, without subsidies, tax breaks or any government assistance. One option a right, the other a privilege.

For an analogy, think of K-12 schools. A public option available without cost to students. For most, a good and more than adequate education. And a free-market private school option for those who desire and have the means. Shop around, pay as much as you want, or default to the public option.

Each system has its pros and cons, but they are separate and distinct. Instead we are trying to combine both into a single scheme — Obamacare, Ryancare or whatever finally emerges from Congress. We get the worst of both systems – bureaucracy and high cost. And the best of neither – no universal coverage and limited freedom of choice.

The blog post is here.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Victims, vectors and villains: are those who opt out of vaccination morally responsible for the deaths of others?

Euzebiusz Jamrozik, Toby Handfield, Michael J Selgelid
Journal of Medical Ethics 2016;42:762-768.

Abstract

Mass vaccination has been a successful public health strategy for many contagious diseases. The immunity of the vaccinated also protects others who cannot be safely or effectively vaccinated—including infants and the immunosuppressed. When vaccination rates fall, diseases like measles can rapidly resurge in a population. Those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons are at the highest risk of severe disease and death. They thus may bear the burden of others' freedom to opt out of vaccination. It is often asked whether it is legitimate for states to adopt and enforce mandatory universal vaccination. Yet this neglects a related question: are those who opt out, where it is permitted, morally responsible when others are harmed or die as a result of their decision? In this article, we argue that individuals who opt out of vaccination are morally responsible for resultant harms to others. Using measles as our main example, we demonstrate the ways in which opting out of vaccination can result in a significant risk of harm and death to others, especially infants and the immunosuppressed. We argue that imposing these risks without good justification is blameworthy and examine ways of reaching a coherent understanding of individual moral responsibility for harms in the context of the collective action required for disease transmission. Finally, we consider several objections to this view, provide counterarguments and suggest morally permissible alternatives to mandatory universal vaccination including controlled infection, self-imposed social isolation and financial penalties for refusal to vaccinate.

The article is here.

Friday, April 14, 2017

The moral bioenhancement of psychopaths

Elvio Baccarini and Luca Malatesti
The Journal of Medical Ethics
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2016-103537

Abstract

We argue that the mandatory moral bioenhancement of psychopaths is justified as a prescription of social morality. Moral bioenhancement is legitimate when it is justified on the basis of the reasons of the recipients. Psychopaths expect and prefer that the agents with whom they interact do not have certain psychopathic traits. Particularly, they have reasons to require the moral bioenhancement of psychopaths with whom they must cooperate. By adopting a public reason and a Kantian argument, we conclude that we can justify to a psychopath being the recipient of mandatory moral bioenhancement because he has a reason to require the application of this prescription to other psychopaths.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

After their children died of overdoses, these families chose to tell the truth

By Alexandra Rockey Fleming
The Washington Post
Originally posted August 1, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

As opioid abuse rages and its legacy of overdose deaths continues to climb, more bereaved families are responding by publicly exposing addiction as the demon. Swapping openness for ambiguity in death notices — “died after a long struggle with addiction” replaces “died suddenly at home” — they are challenging the stigma and shame often bound up in substance abuse. Maybe more important, they’re sounding alarms about the far-reaching grasp of addiction.

“We want people to know that this can happen to anyone,” says Rosemary Roche, the mother of Jordan, who died last year at age 21. “Nobody is immune.”

The article is here.

Monday, June 27, 2016

Moral enhancements & moral responsibility

By Michelle Ciurria
Moral Responsibility Blog
Originally published May 25, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

What are our duties with respect to moral enhancements? We can approach this question from two directions: our individual duty to use or submit to moral interventions, and our duty to provide or administer them to people with moral deficits. This might seem to suggest a distinction between self-regarding duties and other-regarding duties, but this is a false dichotomy because the duty to enhance oneself is partly a duty to others – a duty to equip oneself to respect other people’s rights and interests. So both duties have an other-regarding dimension. The distinction I’m talking about is between duties to enhance oneself, and duties to enhance other other people: self-directed duties and other-directed duties.

These two duties also cannot be neatly demarcated because we might need to weigh self-directed duties against other-directed duties to achieve a proper balance. That is, given finite time and resources, my duty to enhance myself in some way might be outweighed by my duty to foster the capabilities of another person. So we need to work out a proper balance, and different normative frameworks will provide different answers. All frameworks, however, seem to support these two kinds of duties, though they balance them differently.

The article is here.

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Legal and ethical aspects of organ donation after euthanasia in Belgium and the Netherlands

Jan Bollen, Rankie ten Hoopen, Dirk Ysebaert, Walther van Mook, & Ernst van Heurn
J Med Ethics doi:10.1136/medethics-2015-102898

Abstract

Organ donation after euthanasia has been performed more than 40 times in Belgium and the Netherlands together. Preliminary results of procedures that have been performed until now demonstrate that this leads to good medical results in the recipient of the organs. Several legal aspects could be changed to further facilitate the combination of organ donation and euthanasia. On the ethical side, several controversies remain, giving rise to an ongoing, but necessary and useful debate. Further experiences will clarify whether both procedures should be strictly separated and whether the dead donor rule should be strictly applied. Opinions still differ on whether the patient's physician should address the possibility of organ donation after euthanasia, which laws should be adapted and which preparatory acts should be performed. These and other procedural issues potentially conflict with the patient's request for organ donation or the circumstances in which euthanasia (without subsequent organ donation) traditionally occurs.

The article is here.

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Apple’s Engineers, if Defiant, Would be in Sync With Ethics Code

By John Markoff
The New York Times
Originally published March 18, 2016


If Apple employees refused to perform the software engineering tasks that would be necessary to provide the F.B.I. with access to the contents of an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the December mass killing in San Bernardino, Calif., their decision would be explicitly supported by the code of ethics of a professional organization called the Association for Computing Machinery.

The group urges computer professionals to obey existing laws unless they raise ethical issues that come into play around privacy and technological systems that have the ability to harm the public.

The article is here.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Colorado Looks to Broaden Therapists' Power to Prevent School Shootings

by Dan Frosch
The Wall Street Journal
Originally published March 6, 2016

In a state that has been battered by mass shootings, Colorado lawmakers are trying a new, focused approach to stopping bloodshed in schools.

A proposed bill would broaden the circumstances under which mental-health professionals can report a student that they believe poses a threat, an issue that has drawn increasing attention around the country

Colorado law requires mental-health workers to alert authorities if a patient expresses a specific, imminent threat, and mandates that they warn those being threatened.

The proposal would permit therapists to alert school administrators about a potentially dangerous student even if that danger isn't immediate. It would apply to all public and private schools, as well as institutes of postsecondary education. Counselors who are school district employees are already permitted such latitude under federal law, but many schools contract with outside mental health workers to treat students, and some students are in private therapy as well, experts said.

The bill, which has bipartisan support, sailed through Colorado's House of Representatives last month by a vote of 51-12. It now heads to the Senate, where it is expected to have the backing of members of both parties.

The article is here.

Sunday, February 7, 2016

Tolerable Risks? Physicians and Youth Tackle Football

Kathleen E. Bachynski, M.P.H.
N Engl J Med 2016; 374:405-407

At least 11 U.S. high-school athletes died playing football during the fall 2015 season. Their deaths attracted widespread media attention and provided fodder for ongoing debates over the safety of youth tackle football. In October 2015, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued its first policy statement directly addressing tackling in football. The organization’s Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness conducted a review of the literature on tackling and football-related injuries and evaluated the potential effects of limiting or delaying tackling on injury risk. It found that concussions and catastrophic injuries are particularly associated with tackling and that eliminating tackling from football would probably reduce the incidence of concussions, severe injuries, catastrophic injuries, and overall injuries.

But rather than recommend that tackling be eliminated in youth football, the AAP committee primarily proposed enhancing adult supervision of the sport. It recommended that officials enforce the rules of the game, that coaches teach young players proper tackling techniques, that physical therapists and other specialists help players strengthen their neck muscles to prevent concussions, and that games and practices be supervised by certified athletic trainers. There is no systematic evidence that tackling techniques believed to be safer, such as the “heads-up” approach promoted by USA Football (amateur football’s national governing body), reduce the incidence of concussions in young athletes. Consequently, the AAP statement acknowledged the need for further study of these approaches. The policy statement also encouraged the expansion of nontackling leagues as another option for young players.

The article is here.