Department of Health, Ethics and Society, Care and Public Health Research Institute, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Institute for Biomedical Ethics, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
Bioethics. 2021 May;35(4):380-384. doi: 10.1111/bioe.12859. Epub 2021 Mar 10.
Much of the ethical discourse concerning the coronavirus pandemic has focused on the allocation of scarce resources, be it potentially beneficial new treatments, ventilators, intensive care beds, or oxygen. Somewhat ironically, the more important ethical issues may lie elsewhere, just as the more important medical issues do not concern intensive care or treatment for COVID-19 patients, but rather the diversion towards these modes of care at the expense of non-Covid patients and treatment. In this article I explore how ethicists can and should prioritize which ethical issues to deal with, and develop a method of triage for identification and prioritization of ethical issues both in the next public health emergency and in bioethics more widely.
关于冠状病毒大流行的许多伦理讨论都集中在稀缺资源的分配上，无论是有潜在益处的新治疗方法、呼吸机、重症监护床位还是氧气。颇具讽刺意味的是，更重要的伦理问题可能出现在其他地方，就像更重要的医学问题与 COVID-19 患者的重症监护或治疗无关，而在于将治疗模式转向这些方面，牺牲了非 COVID 患者和治疗。在本文中，我探讨了伦理学家如何以及应该优先处理哪些伦理问题，并为在下一次公共卫生紧急情况以及更广泛的生物伦理学中识别和优先处理伦理问题开发了一种分类方法。
