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 Moral Obligations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moral Obligations. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

The Ethics of Quarantine

The Ethics of Quarantine | Journal of Ethics | American Medical ...Ross Upshur
Virtual Mentor. 2003;5(11):393-395.


Here are two excerpts:

There are 2 independent ethical considerations to consider here: whether the concept of quarantine is justified ethically and whether it is effective. It is also important to make a clear distinction between quarantine and isolation. Quarantine refers to the separation of those exposed individuals who are not yet symptomatic for a period of time (usually the known incubation period of the suspected pathogen) to determine whether they will develop symptoms. Quarantine achieves 2 goals. First, it stops the chain of transmission because it is less possible to infect others if one is not in social circulation. Second, it allows the individuals under surveillance to be identified and directed toward appropriate care if they become symptomatic. This is more important in diseases where there is presymptomatic shedding of virus. Isolation, on the other hand, is keeping those who have symptoms from circulation in general populations.

Justification of quarantine and quarantine laws stems from a general moral obligation to prevent harm to (infection of) others if this can be done. Most democracies have public health laws that do permit quarantine. Even though quarantine is a curtailment of civil liberties, it can be broadly justified if several criteria can be met.

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Secondly, the proportionality, or least-restrictive-means, principle should be observed. This holds that public health authorities should use the least restrictive measures proportional to the goal of achieving disease control. This would indicate that quarantine be made voluntary before more restrictive means and sanctions such as mandatory orders or surveillance devices, home cameras, bracelets, or incarceration are contemplated. It is striking to note that in the Canadian SARS outbreak in the Greater Toronto area, approximately 30,000 persons were quarantined at some time. Toronto Public Health reports writing only 22 orders for mandatory detainment [3]. Even if the report is a tenfold underestimate, the remaining instances of voluntary quarantine constitute an impressive display of civic-mindedness.

Thirdly, reciprocity must be upheld. If society asks individuals to curtail their liberties for the good of others, society has a reciprocal obligation to assist them in the discharge of their obligations. That means providing individuals with adequate food and shelter and psychological support, accommodating them in their workplaces, and not discriminating against them. They should suffer no penalty on account of discharging their obligations to society.

The info is here.

Sunday, March 25, 2018

Did Iraq Ever Become A Just War?

Matt Peterson
The Atlantic
Originally posted March 24, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

There’s a broader sense of moral confusion about the conduct of America’s wars. In Iraq, what started as a war of choice came to resemble much more a war of necessity. Can a war that started unjustly ever become righteous? Or does the stain permanently taint anything that comes after it?

The answers to these questions come from the school of philosophy called “just war” theory, which tries to explain whether and when war is permissible, and under what circumstances. It offers two big ways to think about the justice of war. One is whether it’s appropriate to go to war in the first place. Take North Korea, for example. Is there a cause worth killing thousands—millions—of North and South Korean civilians over? Invoking “national security” isn’t enough to make a war just. Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons pose an obvious threat to South Korea, Japan, and the United States. But that alone doesn’t make war an acceptable choice, given the lives at stake. The ethics of war require the public to assess how certain it is that innocents will be killed if the military doesn’t act (Will Kim really use his nukes offensively?), whether there’s any way to remove the threat without violence (Has diplomacy been exhausted?), and whether the scale of the deaths that would come from intervention is truly in line with the danger war is meant to avert (If the peninsula has to be burned down to be saved, is it really worth it?)—among other considerations.

The other questions to ask are about the nature of the combat. Are soldiers taking care to target only North Korea’s military? Once the decision has been made that Kim’s nuclear weapons pose an imminent threat, hypothetically, that still wouldn’t make it acceptable to firebomb Pyongyang to turn the population against him. Similarly, American forces could not, say, blow up a bus full of children just because one of Kim’s generals was trying to escape on it.

The article is here.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Are We Obligated to Make Ourselves More Moral and Intelligent? (Part One)

By J. Hughes
Ethical Technology
Originally posted March 13, 2014

Most of the ethical discussion of the use of stimulant drugs without a prescription in education has been negative, associating their use with performance enhancement in sports and with drug abuse. But the use of stimulants as study drugs actually has few side effects, and is almost entirely applied to the student’s primary obligation, academic performance. In this I consider some objections to off-label stimulant use, and to stimulant therapy for ADD, and argue that there are ethical arguments for the use of stimulants, and for future cognitively and morally enhancing therapies, in education, the work place, and daily life.

In recent years, as the diagnosis of ADD has become more common, and increasing numbers of adults have begun taking stimulant medications as a treatment for ADD, or without a prescription as a study aid, there have been calls for stricter regulation of the diagnosis and the drugs. People have suggested that the treatment of ADD with stimulants is a conspiracy of pharmaceutical capitalists in league with dubious pediatricians, when the real cause of inattentiveness is allegedly a dysfunctional industrial era educational system obsessed with standardized testing. The alleged risks of the use by adults without prescriptions have been hyped, and the "users vilified as "cheaters" contributing to a pharmaceutical arms race.

The entire article is here.

Friday, October 18, 2013

Humans Are Already More "Enhanced" by Technology Than We Realize

By Evan Selinger
Slate.com
Originally published October 4, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

Transhumanists “view human nature as a work in progress” and hope that developments in science and technology will enable us to become people “with vastly greater capacities than present human beings have”.  Some of its adherents truly do believe parents are morally obliged “to have the healthiest children through all natural and artificial means available.” Brashear wants her audience to know about their controversial ideology of “procreative beneficence,” rather than remaining unaware of its existence and influence.

Brashear also wants us to question whether society has an unhealthy obsession with competitiveness. If so, we should pause and ask what will happen in the future when the skills and abilities we respect today—or even just consider typical—become obsolete?

The entire article is here.