{"title":"Nancy Segal: Deliberately divided: inside the controversial study of twins and triplets adopted apart","authors":"A. McDowell","doi":"10.1007/s40592-022-00159-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-022-00159-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43628,"journal":{"name":"Monash Bioethics Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41432133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Monash Bioethics ReviewPub Date : 2022-06-01Epub Date: 2022-02-18DOI: 10.1007/s40592-022-00151-x
Diego S Silva
{"title":"The abandonment of Australians in India: an analysis of the right of entry as a security right in the age of COVID-19.","authors":"Diego S Silva","doi":"10.1007/s40592-022-00151-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-022-00151-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In May 2021, when the Delta variant of SARS-CoV2 was wreaking havoc in India, the Australian Federal Government banned its citizens and residents who were there from coming back to Australia for 14 days on penalty of fines or imprisonment. These measures were justified on the grounds of protecting the broader Australian public from potentially importing the Delta strain, which officials feared would then seed a local outbreak. Those Australians stranded in India, and their families and communities back home, claimed that they were abandoned by Prime Minister Scott Morrison's government. This case-along with other barriers used as part of border control measures in the name of public health-raises the following question: is it ever morally permissible for a state to ban its citizens and residents from entering their own country during a pandemic? I conclude that it's impermissible. I argue that persons have a right of entry that should be understood as a security right. This security right should be non-derogable because it's a foundational good that is necessary for life-planning purposes. Moreover, it is a right that people should be able to rely upon absolutely, even during pandemics. At the very least, should someone believe that there are rare exceptions to the right of entry on public health grounds, governments have a duty-grounded in the principle of reciprocity-to support those who are temporarily denied entry. In the case of Australians stranded in India, I will argue that the Australian Federal Government failed on all accounts.</p>","PeriodicalId":43628,"journal":{"name":"Monash Bioethics Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8856926/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39812641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Monash Bioethics ReviewPub Date : 2022-06-01Epub Date: 2022-07-20DOI: 10.1007/s40592-022-00161-9
Shamik Dasgupta
{"title":"School in the time of Covid.","authors":"Shamik Dasgupta","doi":"10.1007/s40592-022-00161-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-022-00161-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article argues that extended school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic were a moral catastrophe. It focuses on closures in the United States of America and discusses their effect on the pandemic (or lack thereof), their harmful effects on children, and other morally relevant factors. It concludes by discussing how these closures came to pass and suggests that the root cause was structural, not individual: the relevant decision-makers were working in an institutional setting that stacked the deck heavily in favor of extended closures.</p>","PeriodicalId":43628,"journal":{"name":"Monash Bioethics Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9537117/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40522137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Monash Bioethics ReviewPub Date : 2022-06-01Epub Date: 2022-09-27DOI: 10.1007/s40592-022-00163-7
Euzebiusz Jamrozik
{"title":"Public health ethics: critiques of the \"new normal\".","authors":"Euzebiusz Jamrozik","doi":"10.1007/s40592-022-00163-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-022-00163-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The global response to the recent coronavirus pandemic has revealed an ethical crisis in public health. This article analyses key pandemic public health policies in light of widely accepted ethical principles: the need for evidence, the least restrictive/harmful alternative, proportionality, equity, reciprocity, due legal process, and transparency. Many policies would be considered unacceptable according to pre-pandemic norms of public health ethics. There are thus significant opportunities to develop more ethical responses to future pandemics. This paper serves as the introduction to this Special Issue of Monash Bioethics Review and provides background for the other articles in this collection.</p>","PeriodicalId":43628,"journal":{"name":"Monash Bioethics Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9514707/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40379113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Monash Bioethics ReviewPub Date : 2022-06-01Epub Date: 2022-06-15DOI: 10.1007/s40592-022-00157-5
Tim Soutphommasane, Marc Stears
{"title":"Fear, freedom and political culture during COVID-19.","authors":"Tim Soutphommasane, Marc Stears","doi":"10.1007/s40592-022-00157-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-022-00157-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Australia's experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has been widely perceived to have been a successful one, based on the relatively few number of lives lost to the virus compared to the rest of the world. There remain, nonetheless, serious ethical challenges at the heart of the Australian response to COVID-19. The broadly positive outcomes of Australia's pandemic response mask more troubling developments within its political culture, and the costs it has imposed on its society. This article examines two concerns in particular: the normalisation of fear and emergency through the language and policy responses adopted by governments, and the significant diminution of individual freedoms and human rights.</p>","PeriodicalId":43628,"journal":{"name":"Monash Bioethics Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9438370/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40343885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Monash Bioethics ReviewPub Date : 2022-06-01Epub Date: 2021-11-27DOI: 10.1007/s40592-021-00140-6
Peter Godfrey-Smith
{"title":"Covid heterodoxy in three layers.","authors":"Peter Godfrey-Smith","doi":"10.1007/s40592-021-00140-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-021-00140-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Lockdowns and related policies of behavioral and economic restriction introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are criticized, drawing on three sets of ideas and arguments that are organized in accordance with the likely degree of controversy associated with their guiding assumptions. The first set of arguments makes use of cost-benefit reasoning within a broadly utilitarian framework, emphasizing uncertainty, the role of worst-case scenarios, and the need to consider at least the medium term as well as immediate effects. The second draws on assumptions about the political value of basic liberties. The third draws on ideas about the roles of different stages within human life.</p>","PeriodicalId":43628,"journal":{"name":"Monash Bioethics Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8627291/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39673743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Monash Bioethics ReviewPub Date : 2022-06-01Epub Date: 2022-01-28DOI: 10.1007/s40592-021-00148-y
Martin Lally
{"title":"A cost-benefit analysis of COVID-19 lockdowns in Australia.","authors":"Martin Lally","doi":"10.1007/s40592-021-00148-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-021-00148-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper conducts a cost-benefit analysis of Australia's Covid-19 lockdown strategy relative to pursuit of a mitigation strategy in March 2020. The estimated additional deaths from a mitigation strategy are 11,500 to 40,000, implying a Cost per Quality Adjusted Life Year saved by locking down of at least 11 times the generally employed figure of $100,000 for health interventions in Australia. The lockdowns do not then seem to have been justified by reference to the standard benchmark. Consideration of the information available to the Australian government in March 2020 yields a similar ratio and therefore the same conclusion that lockdown was not warranted. If Australia experiences a new outbreak, and cannot contain it without resort to a nationwide lockdown, the death toll from adopting a mitigation strategy at this point would be even less than had it done so in March 2020, due to the vaccination campaign, lessons learned since March 2020, and because the period over which the virus would then inflict casualties would now be much less than the period from March 2020. This would favour a mitigation policy even more strongly than in March 2020. This approach of assessing the savings in quality adjusted life years and comparing them to a standard benchmark figure ensures that all quality adjusted life years saved by various health interventions are treated equally, which accords with the ethical principle of equity across people.</p>","PeriodicalId":43628,"journal":{"name":"Monash Bioethics Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8794621/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39743425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Medical versus social egg freezing: the importance of future choice for women’s decision-making","authors":"M. De Proost, A. Paton","doi":"10.1007/s40592-022-00153-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-022-00153-9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43628,"journal":{"name":"Monash Bioethics Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45698806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Monash Bioethics ReviewPub Date : 2021-12-01Epub Date: 2021-12-31DOI: 10.1007/s40592-021-00146-0
Christopher Gyngell, Fiona Lynch, Zornitza Stark, Danya Vears
{"title":"Consent for rapid genomic sequencing for critically ill children: legal and ethical issues.","authors":"Christopher Gyngell, Fiona Lynch, Zornitza Stark, Danya Vears","doi":"10.1007/s40592-021-00146-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-021-00146-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Although rapid genomic sequencing (RGS) is improving care for critically ill children with rare disease, it also raises important ethical questions that need to be explored as its use becomes more widespread. Two such questions relate to the degree of consent that should be required for RGS to proceed and whether it might ever be appropriate to override parents' decisions not to allow RGS to be performed in their critically ill child. To explore these questions, we first examine the legal frameworks on securing consent for genomic sequencing and how they apply to the specific context of RGS for critically ill children. We then use a tool from clinical ethics, the Zone of Parental Discretion, to explore two case studies and identify under which circumstances it might be appropriate for parental refusal of RGS to be overridden. We argue that RGS may be a context where, in addition to assessing the complexity of the test offered, it is ethically appropriate to consider an effect on patient outcomes when deciding the degree of consent required. We also suggest that there are some contexts where it may be ethically justified to perform RGS, even when it is actively against the wishes of the parents. More work is needed to examine exactly how 'time-sensitive' exceptions to current guidance on consent for genomic sequencing could be formulated and operationalised for RGS for critically ill-children.</p>","PeriodicalId":43628,"journal":{"name":"Monash Bioethics Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39864439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}