unethical

12Mar

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19

It May Undermine Trust In The Rollout – Skipping The Vaccine Line Is Not Only Unethical

The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine has been accompanied by reports of line-jumping as people farther down the list attempt to get ahead of those deemed higher priority. In late February, for example, one health provider, One Medical, was stripped of its vaccine allocation after allegedly allowing people connected to the company and those paying for its “concierge medical service” to have the shots – despite not being eligible. Likewise in January, hospitals in Washington state and South Florida faced criticism for offering invitation-only vaccine slots to private donors. More recently, Texas has come under scrutiny for allowing people to be vaccinated without proving eligibility. The resulting unfairness of practices such as these has compounded other inequalities highlighted by the pan...

Challenge trials for a coronavirus vaccine are unethical – except for in one unlikely scenario

The world urgently needs a vaccine for COVID-19. Only when a vaccine is approved and people are safe can countries fully end their lockdowns and resume normal life. The trouble is that such vaccines usually take years to develop and test for efficacy and safety. Recently, some bioethicists have proposed a way of speeding up this testing process by several months. Researchers would put volunteers in quarantine with access to the best medical care, give these volunteers one of the trial vaccines and then directly expose them to the coronavirus. This type of intentional exposure is called a challenge trial, and since researchers would not have to wait for subjects to encounter the virus in the normal course of their daily lives, it could result in a vaccine much faster than a normal trial. R...

Facebook staff lamented ‘unethical’ practices but were rebuffed

Facebook Inc. employees repeatedly chafed at what they viewed as anti-competitive or unethical practices by the company, internal chats show. But their concerns, voiced in 2012 and 2013, were overruled by senior managers including Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who argued that the survival of the social network was more important. The messages come from a roughly 7,000-page trove of leaked documents that were part of a years-old lawsuit in the Bay Area’s San Mateo County. The interactions are likely to be scrutinized further as Facebook faces ongoing antitrust investigations. In multiple discussions found in the documents, employees, including some top executives, argued against policies that would cut off competitors’ ability to advertise on the platform and access Facebook...