In their important article, Haward et al. (2020) discuss whether guidelines for treating extremely premature babies should be altered to free up ventilators during crises such as COVID-19 pandemic. The authors’ claim is that premature babies do not deserve special consideration for ventilator treatment but merely equal consideration. In this brief commentary, I continue their discussion by considering additional factors that may help us determine whom we should save in a crisis: babies or the elderly.

The aim of this commentary is to critically examine Matti Häyry’s article ‘Just Better Utilitarianism’, where he argues that liberal utilitarianism can offer a basis for moral and political choices in bioethics and thus could be helpful in decision-making. This commentary, while generally sympathetic to Häyry’s perspective, argues that Häyry should expand on who belongs to our moral community because, to solve practical ethical issues, we need to determine who (and what) deserves our moral consideration. Challenging Häyry’s principle of actual (...) or prospective existence, this commentary suggests that – at least sometimes – the quality of life of those who will never come into existence matters. In a similar vein, this commentary aims to show that determining how to treat mindless humans such as fetuses might pose difficulties for liberal utilitarianism unless the issue of the boundaries of the moral community is addressed. (shrink)

In this Commentary, I propose an ethical framework for ethical discussions around the allocation of scarce resources in COVID-19 response. The framework incorporates four principles: beneficence (benefiting people by saving lives or years of life), equality, remedying disadvantage, and recognizing past conduct. I then discuss how the framework interacts with ethical constraints against using people as a mere means and against causing death. The commentary closes by criticizing the equation of deontological ethics with random or first-come, first-served allocation and of (...) allocation that aims to save more lives or years of life with utilitarianism.. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 122-124.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 1-5.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 147-150.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 177-180.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 182-184.