This book demonstrates that the COVID 19 pandemic asks for a a global approach to bioethics. it describes how the pandemic affects the experience of being in a world that is intrinsically characterized by global connectivity. It demonstrates that a moral vision is necessary to articulate this experience of connectedness. Subsequently, a perspective of global bioethics is introduced, which provides a broader framework than mainstream bioethics, since it highlights the significance of both vulnerability and solidarity. Through a unique global perspective the book addresses the moral challenges of the pandemic, and places the confrontation with death, disease and disability within a wider framework of ethical concerns. This book is of important in the public debate on infectious diseases, and of relevance to health professionals, global health educators, public health experts,as well as policy makers.

This book offers a compelling ethical analysis of challenges in COVID-19 biomedical research, vaccination and therapy. Moreover, it draws attention to popular countermeasures, such as AI-based prevention, lockdowns and vaccinations. Through unique perspectives, it addresses some ethical challenges associated with the pandemic, providing ethical criteria guidelines for health emergencies, focusing on the allocation of limited life-saving resources in a triage situation and the dilemma of who to treat. In addition, the book highlights the necessity of the outlining of a global bioethical framework for pandemic management, rooted in human rights.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every human being on the planet and forced us all to reflect on the bioethical issues it raises. In this timely book, Gregory Pence examines a number of relevant issues, including the fair allocation of scarce medical resources, immunity passports, tradeoffs between protecting senior citizens and allowing children to flourish, discrimination against minorities and the disabled, and the myriad issues raised by vaccines.

A portion of the revenue from this book’s sales will be donated to Doctors Without Borders to assist in the fight against COVID-19. The rapid spread of COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact on modern health-care systems and has given rise to a number of complex ethical issues. This collection of readings and case studies offers an overview of some of the most pressing of these issues, such as the allocation of ventilators and other scarce resources, the curtailing of standard privacy measures for the sake of public health, and the potential obligations of health-care professionals to continue operating in dangerous work environments.

The panorama of bioethical problems is different today. Patients travel to Thailand for fast surgery; commercial surrogate mothers in India deliver babies to parents in rich countries; organs, body parts and tissues are trafficked from East to Western Europe; physicians and nurses migrating from Africa to the U.S; thousands of children or patients with malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS are dying each day because they cannot afford effective drugs that are too expensive. Mainstream bioethics as it has developed during the last 50 years in Western countries is evolving into a broader approach that is relevant for people across the world and is focused on new global problems. This book provides an introduction into the new field of global bioethics. Addressing these problems requires a broader vision of bioethics that not only goes beyond the current emphasis on individual autonomy, but that criticizes the social, economic and political context that is producing the problems at global level. This book argues that global bioethics is a necessity because the social, economic and environmental effects of globalization require critical responses. Global bioethics is not a finished product that can simply be applied to solve global problems, but it is the ongoing result of interaction and exchange between local practices and global discourse. It combines recognition of differences and respect for cultural diversity with convergence towards common perspectives and shared values. The book examines the nature of global problems as well as the type of responses that are needed, in order to exemplify the substance of global bioethics. It discusses the ethical frameworks that are available for global discourse and shows how these are transformed into global governance mechanisms and practices.

This book contains original essays that look at contagious/infectious disease pandemics and the ethical public policy and administration these have entailed. In particular, the pandemics of the 1918 flu pandemic, HIV in the 1990s, SARS in 2003, Ebola from 2014–2016 and the novel COVID-19 in 2020 are highlighted. The contributions in this work offer the reader insights in these and several other recent pandemics that present differently—either via contagion or mortality rate—and how each should be addressed by countries of various sorts. This book is a must for the ongoing debate on how we should treat public health crises, such as the one we have all just encountered in the novel COVID-19 pandemic.