The end of the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to be achieved through large-scale vaccination of the global population. So far vaccination against COVID-19 has been shown to reduce mortality and morbidity, minimize economic and social burdens, and ensure that people resume their everyday activities. Fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines is critical in ensuring ethical distribution globally. This paper discusses ethical allocation of COVID-19 vaccines, focusing on models that have been proposed for global allocation, as well as provides a discussion on a Christian response to the pandemic.
Category Archives: Original Article
The Pandemic, Empathy Fatigue, and Ethical Motivations: Kant on Conscience and Scotus on Love
The social effects of the pandemic have exacerbated the ability and desire to overcome empathy fatigue and, consequently, have engendered more indifference towards others and isolationism among the population. These effects challenge society’s moral resolve to care for others. In this paper I present two ethical explanations of the basis of morality and moral action—Immanuel Kant’s ethic of pure will (conscience) and John Duns Scotus’ ethic of an ontology of love, and endeavor to show that a morality based solely on our rationally justifiable conscience does not adequately compel us to overcome empathy fatigue, whereas a morality based on an acknowledgement and affirmation of the lovableness of others can propel us to overcome empathy fatigue.
A Theology of Human Limitation and Medicine
Christians view sickness as a part of life. Yet, modern medicine finds little purpose in the embodied human who is also a spiritual being. While Christians live with the two-fold reality that sickness and death will occur, they do not need to languish without medical treatment.
Ethical Evaluation of New Biomedical Technologies Using Past Case Studies in Pharmaceutical Medicine
Biomedical enhancements have the potential to extend human capacities and significantly improve human life. Consequently, their widespread use may yield greater benefits than current interventions in biopharmaceutical medicine. Ethical assessment of novel biomedical technologies prior to widespread adoption is therefore important.
Promise or Peril? Progressive Evangelicals, Technology, and Social Justice in the 1970s
Raising questions related to technology often raises ire on multiple fronts. Some think all technology is neutral. Others lean strongly toward purely positive or purely negative assessments. Yet many neglect the way that analyzing technology connects with other beliefs and commitments. This article seeks to ameliorate this issue and better prepare thinkers to recognize their own web of thinking by exploring progressive evangelical approaches to technology in the 1970s. This historical exploration highlights some key features of the ethics of technology that continue to impact the way Christians ask and answer these questions today, whether that is related to biomedical issues, military technology, or entertainment technology.
Climate Change Related Health Hazards and the Academic Responsibility of Evangelical Bioethicists
Abstract
This article will explore the academic responsibility of Evangelical bioethicists to address climate change related health hazards. First, it will provide evidence-based data on climate change related health hazards, which disproportionately affect the poor and vulnerable worldwide, and as such are a form of environmental racism. Second, it will look at responses to climate change. So-called “climate change deniers” in the United States—the majority of which are Evangelical—will be addressed and the argument will be put forth that, regardless of the causes of climate change, climate change bioethics is part of the Christian tradition of healing and justice. Focusing on climate health hazards builds consensus across partisan and denominational lines by addressing the result—not the cause—of climate change. Third, the article will confront the academic responsibility of Evangelical bioethicists in addressing climate change related health hazards using the paradigm of H. Richard Niebuhr’s homo dialectus. It will, fourth, offer public theology and biblical scholarship as ways to engage this matter of moral significance. The conclusion will urge Evangelical bioethicists to develop a framework, such as Evangelical environmental bioethics, to effectively address climate change health hazards.
Keywords:
Climate change; human health; Evangelical theology; H. Richard Niebuhr; responsibility; sustainability; practical theology; theological bioethics
Triage in a Pandemic: Equity, Utility, or Both?
In terms of the setting of priorities for resource allocation, two general principles are important. These are equity and utility. Based on these two concepts, there are two historically discrete models for triage of limited resources. These are the French egalitarian model based on equity and the British military model based on utility. Modern paramedic and emergency room care in multiple casualty situations favors the triage model based on utility. Modern ICU care favors the triage model based on equity. There are issues to be addressed in both triage responses. In a pandemic, both the utilitarian model and the equity model are active, and their applicability changes as the trajectory of the pandemic progresses.
Kindness and the Ethics of Physician-Assisted Suicide
In this paper I explain four features of kindness by examining how four artworks depict them: Giotto di Bondone’s painting of St. Francis of Assisi giving his robe to a beggar, the character Bishop Charles-Francois Myriel in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, the person Adam in William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and the role of Sonya Semyonovna Marmeladov in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. These four examples describe kindness as supererogatory, altruistic, a belief about how the world ought to be, and the possibility of unction. With this understanding of kindness, I examine the most likely moral motives of the physician in physician-assisted suicide and find that the practice does not display the four characteristics of kindness but rather displays the emotion (though it may be sincere) of condescending pity towards the unfortunate people who deem their lives are devoid of the value to live.
Overlooked Costs of Legalizing Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia
Human beings are naturally inhibited with regard to intentionally ending their lives and those of innocent others; human beings naturally love their lives and those of others, and human beings naturally regard human lives as having inalienable worth that is not diminished by or lost by an individual’s circumstances or condition. What do all these natural human proclivities have in common?
The Higher-Brain Concept of Death: A Christian Theological Appraisal
The purpose of this essay is to explore the higher-brain death (HBD) criterion, to identify arguments supporting and opposing the proposal, and to locate this proposal, broadly speaking, within the contemporary brain death debate. Finally, the essay will engage the question of how the proposal might be viewed in Christian thought, and whether it may be endorsed from a Christian standpoint.