Pandemic Ethics

Catalog description

This course is split into three Units. Unit I discusses issues relating to the duty of physicians to care for patients during times of pandemic. Are physicians obligated to care for patients with highly infectious disease? How much personal risks are physicians morally required to take on? In Unit II students will consider questions relating to the just distribution of scarce resources in the context of pandemic medicine. How can we ethically decide which patients will receive life-sustaining resources and which will not? Should younger patients receive higher priority than older patients? How should we go about distributing vaccines or other preventive measures throughout the general population? Finally, Unit III focuses on problems relating to social justice in times of pandemic. How do we ensure that the burdens of a pandemic are equitably distributed between social groups? How far may the government go in constraining individual rights for the sake of public health? How should we understand the obligations of the average citizen to promote the public good? The overall goal of the course will be to help students think carefully and constructively about the ethical issues raised by the current public health crisis.