Covid 19, Disability, and the Ethics of Distributing Scarce Resources

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-68
Author(s):  
James B. Gould ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Medical Resources ◽  
Scarce Resources

The Covid-19 pandemic provides a real-world context for evaluating the fairness of disability-based rationing of scarce medical resources. I discuss three situations clinicians may face: rationing based on disability itself; rationing based on inevitable disability-related comorbidities; and rationing based on preventable disability-related comorbidities. I defend three conclusions. First, in a just distribution, extraneous factors do not influence a person’s share. This rules out rationing based on disability alone, where no comorbidities decrease a person’s capacity to benefit from treatment. Second, in a just distribution, undeserved luck does not influence a person’s share. This rules out rationing for biologically caused comorbidities that decrease capacity to benefit. Third, in a just distribution, social injustice does not influence a person’s share. This rules out rationing for socially caused comorbidities that decrease capacity to benefit.

The Oxford Handbook of Social Psychology and Social Justice

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Real World ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Massive Scale ◽  
Twenty First Century

The twentieth century witnessed not only the devastation of war, conflict, and injustice on a massive scale, but also the emergence of social psychology as a discipline committed to addressing these and other social problems. In the twenty-first century, the promise of social psychology remains incomplete. We witness the reprise of authoritarianism and the endurance of institutionalized forms of oppression such as sexism, racism, and heterosexism across the globe. This volume represents an audacious proposal to reorient social psychology toward the study of social injustice in real-world settings. Contributors cross borders between cultures and disciplines to highlight new and emerging critical paradigms that interrogate the consequences of social injustice. United in their belief in the possibility of liberation from oppression, the authors of this book offer a blueprint for a new kind of social psychology.

scholarly journals Ethical compass for medical solutions in the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-25
Author(s):  
L. P. Petrashko ◽  
◽  
O. V. Martyniuk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care System ◽  
Medical Staff ◽  
Critical Conditions ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Medical Decisions ◽  
Medical Resources ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
World State ◽  
Care System

The article actualizes and structures significant problems of the medical sphere that arise in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, in terms of the relations vectors: global world – state – person, state – clinic – society, clinic – doctor (medical staff), clinic – patient, doctor (medical staff) – the patient. The authors presented the evolutionary context of the norming process of medical resources and emphasized the hierarchical scheme of the regulation process of scarce resources norming in the health care system under the pandemic crisis conditions. The paper substantiates approaches to making medical decisions on “sorting” and applying a number of its forms depending on various regional, national, religious, and local models of the ethical values system formation. Emphasis is placed on American and European models of bioethics. The authors consider the utilitarian approach to preparing medical solutions of “clinical sorting” to level ethical catastrophes in a pandemic based on Catholic ethics. The issues of regulated norming of scarce medical resources and the “clinical triage” of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine have been investigated. The main bioethical dilemma of the COVID-19 pandemic is outlined. The authors actualize criteria and models of ethical medical solutions for equitable allocation of scarce medical resources in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. These criteria and models are defined in the Ethical Guidelines for Responding to COVID-19 of the Bioethics Committee at the Council of Europe, the US Department of Health and Human Services; in normative documents in the field of ethics of medical decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic of the National Medical Associations, chambers, centres of bioethics of Italy, Hungary, USA, Great Britain; in the guidelines of national, religious and local institutions for the preparation of medical decisions for the levelling ethical catastrophes during the pandemic and the studies of international bioethics experts. The paper identified the need to formalize the fair distribution of scarce resources during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine. The authors suggested recommendations for the implementation of ethical values and priorities for their application in critical conditions of shortage of medical resources and personnel in the COVID-19 pandemic in the health care system of Ukraine.

Property

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Heller
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Real World ◽  
Analytic Property ◽  
Informal Institutions ◽  
Property Theory ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Formal And Informal Institutions ◽  
Practical Politics ◽  
Property Regime

This article argues that despite its seeming disintegration, property is more vibrant than ever — it is a field that has focused on understanding the formal and informal institutions by which society channels decision-making for scarce resources. Many exciting recent innovations in property theory have arisen through dialogue between US and Commonwealth scholars and legislatures. The article is organized as follows. The first part explains the focus on analytic property theory, which is posed in distinction to a jurisprudential approach. The second part introduces the familiar division of ownership into a trilogy of ideal types: private, commons, and state. The next three parts use this trilogy to show how defining, integrating, and constructing these ideal types can lead to useful innovation in property theory. In sum, property theory scholarship seems to work cyclically — reasoning from real-world contests over scarce resources, to analytic tools that translate these struggles into useful conceptual terms, to jurisprudential debates regarding the rightness of resulting allocations, to practical politics that implement one property regime or another, and then back to new on-the-ground struggles.

Fraternity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Lause
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Real World ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
The Real ◽  
National Organization ◽  
Existing Structures

This chapter examines the spiritualists' efforts to rebuild their movement and their communities in a more meaningful way in the course of the Civil War and its immediate aftermath, while also addressing the issues involved in the Reconstruction of the nation. In particular, it considers the movement's formulation of practical steps in hopes of moving into the real world their thoroughly unrealized vision of a fraternity of free and equal peoples. As the nation strove to reconstitute itself, spiritualism achieved a new level of national organization. War not only destroyed existing structures, but also provided new standards for those that would be rebuilt. This chapter shows how the struggle to maintain the mystical idea of the Union transformed the spiritualists' ideal of liberty and strengthened their sense of fraternity, or solidarity, as the safeguard of equality. It also discusses the spiritualists' position on issues such as labor strife and strikes, their responses to social injustice, and their views about social change.

THE ALLOCATION OF SCARCE RESOURCES: SOCIAL HOUSING

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Furnham ◽  
Alastair McClelland
Keyword(s):  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Social Housing ◽  
Medical Resources ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Rank Ordering ◽  
Average Intelligence ◽  
Costly Treatment ◽  
High Intelligence ◽  
Patient Variables

Previous studies on the allocation of scarce medical resources have shown that certain patient variables (e.g. sex, age, number of dependants) significantly affect lay participants' rank ordering of them for costly treatment. This study replicates the methodology of these studies (Furnham, Meader, & McClelland, 1999, Furnham, Simmons, & McClelland, 2000) but using allocation to social housing as the dependent variable. One hundred and sixty-three adults rank ordered sixteen people to be allocated a flat from a housing list. The results indicated that whereas gender made no difference in the decision, nonsmokers were favored over smokers, the mentally healthy over the mentally ill; and those with average intelligence over those with high intelligence. These results are comparable to those from studies looking at the allocation of scarce medical resources.

scholarly journals Veil-of-Ignorance Reasoning Mitigates Self-Serving Bias in Resource Allocation During the COVID-19 Crisis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Huang ◽  
Regan Bernhard ◽  
Netta Barak-Corren ◽  
max bazerman ◽  
Joshua D. Greene
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Medical Resources ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Younger Patients ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
The Veil

The COVID-19 crisis has forced healthcare professionals to make tragic decisions concerning which patients to save. Furthermore, The COVID-19 crisis has foregrounded the influence of self-serving bias in debates on how to allocate scarce resources. A utilitarian principle favors allocating scarce resources such as ventilators toward younger patients, as this is expected to save more years of life. Some view this as ageist, instead favoring age-neutral principles, such as “first come, first served”. Which approach is fairer? The “veil of ignorance” is a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial decision-making by reducing decision-makers’ use of 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 to the COVID-19 ventilator dilemma, asking participants which policy they would prefer if they did not know whether they are younger or older. Two studies (pre-registered; online samples; Study 1, N=414; Study 2 replication, N=1,276) show that veil-of-ignorance reasoning shifts preferences toward saving younger patients. The effect on older participants is dramatic, reversing their opposition toward favoring the young, thereby eliminating self-serving bias. These findings provide guidance on how to remove self-serving biases to healthcare policymakers and frontline personnel charged with allocating scarce medical resources during times of crisis.

Why Trustworthy Stewardship Requires Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 214-257
Author(s):  
Rosamond Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Acute Care ◽  
Resource Allocations ◽  
Summary Table ◽  
Medical Resources ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Moral Discernment ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Relevant Factors

Doctors make daily decisions about allocating medical resources. Society trusts doctors to make those decisions justly, and physicians typically make trustworthy and just allocations. Justice requires not only equality in the treatment of equals, but also moral discernment to identify which factors are significant and how they should be compared. This chapter reviews prominent theories of justice in medicine and argues that each of them oversimplifies by reducing unavoidable complexity into a single and often-inappropriate principle. Instead, this chapter argues that justice should be understood as the conclusion from consideration of relevant factors in particular kinds of decisions. By discussing resource allocations in four domains (nonacute care, acute care, critically scarce resources, public health), the chapter explains which principles of justice should guide allocations in each domain. The chapter includes a summary table showing which principles of justice should be categorically rejected for guiding some allocations and which should be employed.

Replications can cause distorted belief in scientific progress

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michał Białek
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
The Public ◽  
Psychological Science

AbstractIf we want psychological science to have a meaningful real-world impact, it has to be trusted by the public. Scientific progress is noisy; accordingly, replications sometimes fail even for true findings. We need to communicate the acceptability of uncertainty to the public and our peers, to prevent psychology from being perceived as having nothing to say about reality.

Current Issues: Evidence-Based Practice for the Real World: Thoughts on Clinical Education in Communication Disorders

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 100-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne K. Bothe
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Education ◽  
Real World ◽  
Evidence Based Practice ◽  
Communication Disorders ◽  
University Faculty ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Speech Language Pathology ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
The Real ◽  
Language Pathology

This article presents some streamlined and intentionally oversimplified ideas about educating future communication disorders professionals to use some of the most basic principles of evidence-based practice. Working from a popular five-step approach, modifications are suggested that may make the ideas more accessible, and therefore more useful, for university faculty, other supervisors, and future professionals in speech-language pathology, audiology, and related fields.

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