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Article
Publication date: 15 May 2021

Konrad Szocik and Rakhat Abylkasymova

Current covid-19 pandemic challenges health-care ethics. Ones of the most important challenges are medical resources allocation and a duty to treat, often addressed to medical…

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Abstract

Purpose

Current covid-19 pandemic challenges health-care ethics. Ones of the most important challenges are medical resources allocation and a duty to treat, often addressed to medical personnel. This paper suggests that there are good reasons to rethink our health-care ethics for future global catastrophic risks. Current pandemic shows how challenging can be an issue of resources allocation even in a relatively small kind of catastrophic event such as covid-19 pandemic. In this paper, the authors show that any future existential bigger catastrophe may require new guidelines for the allocation of medical resources. The idea of assisted dying is considered as a hypothetical scenario.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a conceptual work based on conceptual analysis at the intersection of risk studies, health-care ethics and future studies. This study builds the argument on the assumption that the covid-19 pandemic should be treated as a sort of global catastrophic risk. Findings show that there are no such attempts in currently published peer-reviewed academic literature. This is crucial concept for the meta-analysis. This study shows why and how current pandemic can be interpreted in terms of global catastrophic risk even if, literally, covid-19 does not meet all criteria required in the risk studies to be called a global catastrophe.

Findings

We can expect an emergence of discriminatory selection policy which will require some actions taken by future patients like, for example, genetic engineering. But even then it is inevitable that there will still be a large number of survivors who require medical assistance, which they have no chance of receiving. This is why this study has considered the concept of assisted dying understood as an official protocol for health-care ethics and resources allocation policy in the case of emergency situations. Possibly more controversial idea discussed in this paper is an idea of assisted dying for those who cannot receive required medical help. Such procedure could be applied in a mass-scale during a global catastrophic event.

Research limitations/implications

Philosophers and ethicists should identify and study all possible pros and cons of this discrimination rule. As this study’s findings suggested above, a reliable point of reference is the concept of substantial human enhancement. Human enhancement as such, widely debated, should be studied in that specific context of discrimination of patients in an access to limited medical resources. Last but not least, scientific community should study the concept of assisted dying which could be applied for those survivors who have no chance of obtaining medical care. Such criteria and concepts as cost-benefit analysis, the ethics of quality of life, autonomy of patients and duty of medical personnel should be considered.

Practical implications

Politicians and policymakers should prepare protocols for global catastrophes where these discrimination criteria would have to be applied. The same applies to the development of medical robotics aimed at replacing human health-care personnel. We assume that this is important implication for practical policy in healthcare. Our prediction, however plausible, is not a good scenario for humanity. But given this realistic development trajectory, we should do everything possible to prevent the need for the discriminatory rules in medical care described above.

Originality/value

This study offers the idea of assisted dying as a health-care policy in emergency situations. The authors expect that next future global catastrophes – looking at the current pandemic only as a mild prelude – will force a radical change in moral values and medical standards. New criteria of selection and discrimination will be perceived as much more exclusivist and unfair than criteria applied today.

Details

International Journal of Human Rights in Healthcare, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2056-4902

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Book part
Publication date: 25 November 2024

Rakhat Abylkasymova and Konrad Szocik

In our chapter, we want to point out the long-term ethical implications of the concept of space exploration and exploitation, which are usually overlooked today. Future space…

Abstract

In our chapter, we want to point out the long-term ethical implications of the concept of space exploration and exploitation, which are usually overlooked today. Future space exploration and exploitation is assumed today as a certain part of human development and includes space tourism, scientific missions, space mining, as well as, in the further future, permanent settlement. But will not such long-term space exploration require the application of extraordinary solutions? In our chapter, we want to analyze this question with regard to the possible obligation or requirement to apply radical human enhancement. Among other things, we want to refer to the feminist perspective and also pay attention to issues such as exclusion and power structures. After all, it is impossible not to analyze the future of human beings in space without drawing attention to current capitalist exploitation of a global nature. We also point out that certain groups such as workers, women, and people with disabilities will be particularly vulnerable to exploitation and exclusion in space, and that human enhancement may negatively affect their social standing and empowerment.

Details

The Ethics Gap in the Engineering of the Future
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83797-635-5

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Book part
Publication date: 25 November 2024

Spyridon Stelios and Kostas Theologou

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The Ethics Gap in the Engineering of the Future
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83797-635-5

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Book part
Publication date: 25 November 2024

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Details

The Ethics Gap in the Engineering of the Future
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83797-635-5

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