ALBERT

Beschreibung: Recent technological developments and potential technological developments of the near future require us to try to think clearly about what it is to have moral status and about when and why we should attribute moral status to beings and entities. What should we say about the moral status of human non-human chimeras, human brain organoids, artificial intelligence, cyborgs, post-humans, and human minds that have been uploaded into a computer, or onto the internet? In this introductory chapter we survey some key assumptions ordinarily made about moral status that may require rethinking. These include the assumptions that all humans who are not severely cognitively impaired have equal moral status, that possession of the sophisticated cognitive capacities typical of human adults is necessary for full moral status, that only humans can have full moral status, and that there can be no beings with higher moral status than ordinary adult humans. We also need to consider how we should treat beings and entities when we find ourselves uncertain about their moral status.

Beschreibung: Liberty-restricting measures are basic measures in combatting any pandemic. But whose liberty should be restricted? One standard response in public health ethics is to appeal to the “least restrictive alternative” necessary to achieve a public health goal. The problem is that in practice, greater restriction of liberty can lead to greater control of the pandemic and save more lives, though with increasing burdens to others. Liberty restriction is thus a question of the distribution of benefitsbenefits benefits and burdens in a population, a question of distributive justice. In this chapter, I argue that in some pandemics, such as COVID-19, it may be a more proportionate restriction of liberty to restrict the liberty of certain groups, rather than the population as a whole. Two arguments were given in the COVID-19 pandemic for liberty restriction: (1) protection of the vulnerable; (2) protection of the health service. These These are, however, more fundamentally issues about distributive justice. I explore how several approaches to distributive justice can support the differential differential differentialdifferentialdifferential restriction of liberty. In addition, I argue that the commonly accepted justificationjustificationjustificationjustificationjustification justification justification justification for liberty restrictions (that liberty restrictions may be justifiedjustifiedjustifiedjustifiedjustified justified to prevent direct harm to others) - can be overly simplistic, as illustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic. I argue that where risk groups (such as the elderly in the COVID-19 pandemic) are more likely to utilise limited health resources, they pose an indirect threat to others during the pandemic that warrants coercion. I argue there should be a side-constraint on justice of non-maleficence.non-maleficence.non-maleficence. non-maleficence. non-maleficence. non-maleficence. This This requires that there is a limit to harm which can be imposed on individuals for others, best captured by a collective duty of easy rescue. For groups such as the young, vaccination or lockdown may not constitute an “easy rescue” of those at greatest risk. I address the issue of whether selective restriction of liberty constitutes unjust discrimination and I propose an algorithm for making decisions about selective restriction of liberty.

Beschreibung: The COVID-19 pandemic has been a defining defining event of the 21st century. Global estimates of excess mortality indicate that it has taken fifteen fifteen million lives over 2020-21 (Knutson et al. 2022). It has closed national borders, put whole populations into quarantine and devastated economies. Almost half of workers in low or middle income countries lost a job or business due to the pandemic (Anonymous 2021). The International Monetary Fund has estimated a global loss to the world economy of US$12trillion by the end of 2021 (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 2020). It led to a rise in rates of extreme poverty for the first firstfirst time in 25 years, with 37 million additional people experiencing this in 2020. The pandemic toll and the cost of measures taken to combat it—both effective effectiveeffectiveeffectiveeffectiveeffective and ineffective—has ineffective—has ineffective—hasineffective—hasineffective—hasineffective—hasineffective—has ineffective—has been paid in human lives, mental and physical suffering,suffering, suffering, suffering,suffering, and economic hardship. The costs will continue to be paid by individuals and societies for decades to come. While the COVID-19 pandemic has been catastrophic, it is not unique. It is not as severe as Spanish influenza, estimated to have killed between 50-100 million people. Recent MERS and SARS epidemics were more deadly to those infected, but less contagious. Future influenza pandemics, perhaps like the hypothetical example above, undoubtedly lie ahead. We await ‘Disease X’, the World Health Organisation’s placeholder name for “a serious international epidemic … caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease.” In some ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a wake up-call. Children who have been home-schooled during the COVID pandemic will almost certainly face another pandemic in their lifetime – one at least as bad—and potentially much worse—than this one.