Vaccine mandates, arguably the most preventive and protective measure to address COVID-19 and to prevent death, require a more organized ethical analysis, streamlined to include the considerations appropriate for government, employers, or other stakeholders, yet broad enough to incorporate largescale considerations like the potential political cost. This post examines the role of religious exemptions viewed…
Voluntariness at the time one provides data is an important, overlooked part of providing informed consent. In medicine, informed consent requires voluntariness, yet the on-the-ground experience may reveal pressures to comply. The new landscape of responsible technology, while it incorporates certain types of consent like clicking to accept cookies, needs more definition and clarity around…
Part 2 in a series on privacy The ethics literature on cybersecurity rarely focuses specifically on children’s data stored by or for schools. Critical analysis should inform an ethics debate over the collection, storage, and use of children’s medical records at the foundational level. Hackers have breached vulnerable websites of labs, insurers, and hospitals. While…
(a six-post series) Privacy & Disclosure of Personal Data As people spend more time online and using apps that collect massive amounts of information, government entities grapple with how to define and protect privacy through regulation. To deem privacy waived by a click that allows access, e.g., by acknowledging cookies, seems unprincipled. But there is…
Virtue signaling is disingenuous behavior; sometimes it is doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Virtue signaling’s chilling and polarizing effects are far broader than a few politically correct topics demonstrate. When people take a position vocally in public for the purpose of expressing their moral rightness, moral superiority, or virtue, they close the…
Facial recognition technology is everywhere. Pew Research found more than half of adults trust law enforcement with facial recognition but fewer trust tech companies, advertisers, and landlords. The data signifies not only that the user matters, but that use matters. Tracking facial reactions to public ads and displays was the least popular use cited by…
In bioethics, moral controversies may have high stakes. Differences of fact or opinion are of a different nature than moral disagreements. There are factual disagreements where a truth may be discovered, making one side right and one side wrong. During the COVID-19 pandemic, some such factual questions were politicized, but that alone does not turn…
The current estimated life expectancy of a Black man in the US is now 68 years. That is seven years less than White and Hispanic male life expectancy. It is a gap that cannot be explained entirely by the medical causes of death in the CDC report. To solve the disparity, people must look to…
Antitrust is one of the biggest current issues in bioethics. Yet, beyond hospital and pharmaceutical industry mergers, it is overlooked by the field. Healthy competition in the corporate or business landscape would impact health. A lack of antitrust enforcement negatively affects health, access to healthcare goods and services, and access to those other goods and…
Through a feminist lens, the self-help industry is sometimes ethically problematic, as noted by various scholars. In particular, the personal growth self-help industry presents a bioethics issue surrounding mental and physical health, equality, justice, employment discrimination, and child care. It challenges the balance between pursuing more and being content with what one has. Some self-help…