Suchergebnisse

"Virtually all Western societies embrace liberalism as a political and moral; it emphasizes individual rights and liberty, democracy, autonomy, limited government, consent, pluralism, and tolerance. Clinical ethics in these societies reflects those priorities. Human migration has made Western societies more diverse and expanded the plurality of values represented within them. As a consequence, clinical ethics consultants (CEC) have encountered cases which reflect a clash between the liberal values of contemporary medical ethics and non-liberal values of patients. Because CECs are steeped in liberalism, their default attitude toward the values outside of that tradition will be tolerance. This paper will argue that because tolerance implicitly contains a judgment of inferiority to other values, it is the wrong attitude for CECs to adopt towards parties whose fundamental values clash with medical ethics. In such cases, this attitude can disrespect to the holders of the values, endorse a consequentialist compromise of values, and leave medical professionals prone to moral distress. Agonism democracy is a political philosophy that accepts that values conflicts are inevitable, and there will be winners and losers from them. It aims to channel this conflict positively by promoting a process marked by openness to questioning fundamental values and genuine consideration of (even contrary) alternate values. As an alternative to tolerance, this paper will explore if cultivating an attitude of agonism can be a better disposition for CECs in such cases. It will use a case study to compare the results of the two approaches in cases of fundamental values clash. "

"In the aftermath of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, media coverage was scrutinized for sensationalism, weakness in explaining scientific uncertainty, dehumanization of patients, and lack of contextualization. The current COVID-19 crisis presents an opportunity to assess whether the media learned its lesson. Results are mixed. Early reporting on the origin of COVID-19 in "wet markets" indicates that the media continues to do poorly with contextualization. On the other hand, stories on mortality and the infectiousness of COVID-19 indicate there has been improvement. The situation remains fluid as COVID-19 threatens to transform into a pandemic at the time of submission. Data from new countries may alter the reported rates of lethality and infectiousness, and media reporting on these changes may or may not be responsible. The explosion of social media, as a medium to promote reporting, could provide bioethicists a tool to direct the public to reliable stories and criticize inaccurate ones. Using a bioethics perspective, this poster will critically evaluate the quality of U.S. and Italian news media's reporting on the evolving scientific understanding of COVID-19 and its contextualization. The presentation will employ QR technology to provide links to media coverage of COVID-19 from the U.S. and Italian news media. After critically appraising the quality of COVID-19 reporting, this poster will consider if bioethicists: 1) should provide comment to the media on pandemics; 2) should correct reporting for the public and 3) have a duty to publicly criticize sensationalism in the media. "