The UGR has coordinated a monographic publication on COVID-19 that deals with various ethical issues related to the pandemic, addressing crucial challenges in the new world scenario from a multidisciplinary perspective: from the theoretical–deliberative to the applied, and from practical philosophy and ethics to medicine and epidemiology, via anthropology or psychology, among other disciplines
A team of researchers from various specialisations and different countries and academic institutions, coordinated by Ester Massó Guijarro, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Granada (UGR), have analysed the relationship between ethics and health in times of pandemic crisis, underlining the importance of care and social justice. The results of their research are now available in the latest volume of the journal Enrahonar, published by the University of Barcelona.
A total of 12 texts make up this special issue, all freely accessible from the journal website (https://revistes.uab.cat/enrahonar/issue/view/72/showToc). The publication deals with various ethical issues associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, addressing crucial challenges in the new world scenario, with an emphasis on health from the perspective of care and social justice. The work takes a multidisciplinary approach, from the theoretical–deliberative to the applied, and from practical philosophy and ethics to medicine and epidemiology, via anthropology or psychology, among other disciplines.
For example, in ‘Childbirth and abortion in times of coronavirus: The impact of the pandemic on sexual and reproductive rights’, Massó and her fellow researcher Rosana Triviño Caballero explore the threats posed by the COVID-19 crisis for both pregnant people and their babies, as well as assessing the new opportunities for bringing greater visibility to these situations of injustice.
In another text, ‘No country for old men? Age as a triage criterion during the COVID-19 pandemic’, UGR researcher Jon Rueda Etxebarria talks about the ageism and gerontophobia that have seeped into the triage variables followed during the pandemic.
In the article by Lydia María de Tienda Palop, entitled ‘What does “war on coronavirus” mean?’, we find an analysis of the current concept of human safety, which has brought about changes such as the use of a wartime lexicon in public discourse. Other fundamental topics covered in the monograph are those of vulnerability and the role of frameworks for deliberation in the pandemic, as captured in titles such as ‘Vulnerability and deliberation in times of epidemic’ (Lydia Feito Grande) or ‘Health emergency: Two frameworks for deliberation’ (Mª Teresa López de la Vieja de la Torre and David Rodríguez-Arias Vailhen), even from a narrative ethics perspective (‘Contagion: Nothing spreads like fear’ by Miguel Melguizo Jiménez, Maite Cruz Piqueras, and Maribel Tamayo Velázquez). The work also addresses the crucial issue of ‘Ethics and health data protection in pandemics: A reference to the case of applications for contact tracking’ (María Belén Andreu Martínez and Txetxu Ausín Díez).
The monograph highlights the importance of the ethical analysis of the possible COVID-19 vaccine in ‘“Haste makes waste”. An ethical analysis of the COVID-19 vaccine: Development, allocation and reticence’ (Maite Cruz Piqueras, Joaquín Hortal Carmona, and Javier Padilla Bernáldez) and provides a general reflection on the pharmaceutical industry (‘Essential drugs, patents and compulsory licenses: Doha is not the answer’, by María Julia Bertomeu and Salvador Bergel). It also examines the intersectional-discrimination dimension of the pandemic, with an emphasis on functional diversity (‘COVID-19. When tragedy turns into opportunity: In search of an inclusive bioethics’, Soledad Arnau Ripollés) and childhood (‘Invisibility as a problem: First approaches to the situation of children under the COVID-19 pandemic confinement policy in Argentina’, by María Jimena Mantilla).
In Massó’s words, this is “almost a campaign monographic—put together urgently, not unlike those hospitals that were set up in a sea of sweat and tarpaulins—with a sense of emergency and emergence, reflecting some of the most crucial controversies that concern and confront us as a human community”.
The impulse behind this volume comes from the ESPACyOS network on Health Ethics for Action, Care and Social Observation of which many of the authors of the publication are members. This network is linked to the ‘FiloLab’ Scientific Unit of Excellence and was promoted by David Rodríguez-Arias, a senior lecturer at the UGR’s Department of Philosophy I.
As Massó points out , “the pandemic crisis thus also invites us to reconsider vulnerability as a human condition from the perspective of philosophy, human rights, and many other fields—a fragility that, in turn, leads us to the impure concept of compassion. Because empathy is not enough”.
The project entitled The Philosophical Laboratory on the Pandemic and the Anthropocene—created by the Spanish Philosophy Network (REF) with the aim of bringing together reflections and hosting philosophical debates on the pandemic—has launched an informative video entitled ‘Philosophy and Public Health’, in which Triviño and Massó discuss this work (https://youtu.be/qsJ-2uHcbGU).
Bibliography:
Massó Guijarro, Ester (ed.) (2020), ‘Ética y salud en tiempos de pandemia: reflexiones sobre cuidados y justicia social’. Monograph. Enrahonar. An International Journal of Theoretical and Practical Reason 65. Online: https://revistes.uab.cat/enrahonar/article/view/v65-masso
Media enquiries:
Ester Massó Guijarro
Department of Philosophy I
Tel.: +34 958 243786
Email: ester@ugr.es
