Bioethics of Pandemia: Mapping the Problem Area

Abstract

Based on the consideration of numerous significant documents of bioethical institutions (the Council of Europe’s Bioethics Committee, the World Health Organization, The Nuffield Council on Bioethics and others), the contour of the pandemic bioethics is described as the problem of equality and equitable access to resources. In a pandemic situation, bioethics plays the role of regulating social practices far beyond biomedicine against the background of medicalization of various spheres of society as a description and normative task of bioethical choice guidelines in the form of principles. The regulatory potential of bioethics is to minimize the risks and irreversible consequences of the medicalization of all spheres of society and human life. In a pandemic situation, bioethics associated with the grounding for a new relationship between the benefits of collective health and personal autonomy. In emergency situations for global health, research is needed to simplifying diagnostics and developing monitoring systems. Also, research helps to understand the essence of medical problems during infection, develop vaccines and treatment methods, adapt methods of patient care, improve the quality of health care. The ethical conditions for recruiting people as test subjects must be met in a pandemic, according to the “DH-BIO Statement on human rights considerations relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic” (Council of Europe Bioethics Committee). The Nuffield Council on Bioethics recommends to follow next experimentation standards, which can be based on an ethical compass of three values ​​— justice, equal respect for human dignity and help reduce suffering. Contamination of healthy volunteers during vaccine testing may be acceptable due to faster preliminary assessments of efficacy and safety, when experimental vaccines are exposed to fewer participants. In a pandemic situation, the border between research and therapy becomes fundamentally vague. The balance between safety, which is guaranteed by strict rules for regulating clinical trials, and the acute need for treatment and search for means of prophylaxis have been violated.