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 Protections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Protections. Show all posts

Monday, May 11, 2020

Why some nurses have quit during the coronavirus pandemic

Safia Samee Ali
nbcnews.com
Originally posted 10 May 20

Here is an excerpt:

“It was an extremely difficult decision, but as a mother and wife, the health of my family will always come first. In the end, I could not accept that I could be responsible for causing one of my family members to become severely ill or possibly die.”

As COVID-19 has infected more than one million Americans, nurses working on the front lines of the pandemic with little protective support have made the gut-wrenching decision to step away from their jobs, saying they were ill-equipped and unable to fight the disease and feared not only for their own safety but also for that of their families.

Many of these nurses, who have faced backlash for quitting, say new CDC protocols have made them feel expendable and have not kept their safety in mind, leaving them no choice but to walk away from a job they loved.

'We're not cannon fodder, we’re human beings'

As the nation took stock of its dwindling medical supplies in the early days of the pandemic, CDC guidance regarding personal protective equipment quickly took a back seat.

N95 masks, which had previously been the acceptable standard of protective care for both patients and medical personnel, were depleting so commercial grade masks, surgical masks, and in the most extreme cases homemade masks such as scarves and bandanas were all sanctioned by the CDC -- which did not return a request for comment -- to counter the lacking resources.

The info is here.

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Has Genetic Privacy Been Strained By Trump's Recent ACA Moves?

Michelle Andrews
www.npr.org
Originally posted July 11, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

However, if you develop symptoms of a disease or are diagnosed with a medical condition, GINA no longer protects you. That's where the Affordable Care Act steps in. It prohibits health plans from turning people down or charging them more because they have a pre-existing condition.

"GINA did something good, and the ACA was the next important step," said Sonia Mateu Suter, a law professor at George Washington University who specializes in genetics and the law.

The Trump administration put those additional ACA protections in doubt last month when it said it won't defend that part of the law, which is being challenged in a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of 20 states.

The administration said that since the penalty for not having health insurance has been eliminated starting in 2019, the provisions that guarantee coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and prohibit insurers from charging them higher premiums should be struck down as well.

The protections are a priority with many voters. In a June poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, two-thirds of voters said that continuing protections for people with pre-existing conditions will be either the single most important factor or very important in determining their vote in this fall's elections.

The information is here.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

VA About To Scrap Ethics Law That Helps Safeguards Veterans From Predatory For-Profit Colleges

Adam Linehan
Task and Purpose
Originally posted October 2, 2017

An ethics law that prohibits Department of Veterans Affairs employees from receiving money or owning a stake in for-profit colleges that rake in millions in G.I. Bill tuition has “illogical and unintended consequences,” according to VA, which is pushing to suspend the 50-year-old statute.

But veteran advocacy groups say suspending the law would make it easier for the for-profit education industry to exploit its biggest cash cow: veterans. 

In a proposal published in the Federal Register on Sept. 14, VA claims that the statute — which, according to The New York Times, was enacted following a string of scandals involving the for-profit education industry — is redundant due to the other conflict-of-interest laws that apply to all federal employees and provide sufficient safeguards.

Critics of the proposal, however, say that the statute provides additional regulations that protect against abuse and provide more transparency. 

“The statute is one of many important bipartisan reforms Congress implemented to protect G.I. Bill benefits from waste, fraud, and abuse,” William Hubbard, Student Veterans of America’s vice president of government affairs, said in an email to Task & Purpose. “A thoughtful and robust public conservation should be had to ensure that the interests of student veterans is the top of the priority list.”

The article is here.

Editor's Note: The swamp continues to grow under the current administration.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

The Ethics of Creating Artificial Consciousness

By John Basl
Northeastern University

Introduction

The purpose of this essay is to raise the prospect that engaging in artificial consciousness research, research that aims to create artifactual entities with conscious states of certain kinds, might be unethical on grounds that it wrongs or will very likely wrong the subjects of such research. I say might be unethical because, in the end, it will depend on how those entities are created and how they are likely to be treated. This essay is meant to be a starting point in thinking about the ethics of artificial consciousness research ethics, not, by any means, the final word on such matters. While the ethics of the creation and proliferation of artificial intelligences and artificial consciousnesses (see, for example, (Chalmers 2010) has often been explored both in academic settings and in popular media and literature, those discussions tend to focus on the consequences for humans or, at most, the potential rights of machines that are very much like us. However, the subjects of artificial consciousness research, at least those subjects that end up being conscious in particular ways, are research subjects in the way that sentient non-human animals or human subjects are research subjects and so should be afforded appropriate protections. Therefore, it is important to ask not only whether artificial consciousnesses that are integrated into our society should be afforded moral and legal protections and whether they are a risk to our safety or existence, but whether the predecessors to such consciousnesses are wronged in their creation or in the research involving them.

The entire article is here.