Ethics, Pandemics, and the Duty to Treat

Numerous grounds have been offered for the view that healthcare workers have a duty to treat, including expressed consent, implied consent, special training, reciprocity (also called the social contract view), and professional oaths and codes. Quite often, however, these grounds are simply asserted...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of bioethics 2008-08, Vol.8 (8), p.4-19
Main Authors: Malm, Heidi, May, Thomas, Francis, Leslie P., Omer, Saad B., Salmon, Daniel A., Hood, Robert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome
AIDS
American Medical Association
Bioethics
Biological weapons
bioterrorism
Codes of Ethics
Communicable Diseases - therapy
Communicable Diseases - transmission
Contracts
Disaster Planning - trends
Disease Outbreaks - ethics
Diseases
Employment - ethics
Employment - organization & administration
Employment - trends
Ethical Theory
Ethics
Ethics, Medical
Ethics, Nursing
Ethics, Professional
Health Manpower - ethics
Health Manpower - organization & administration
Health Manpower - trends
Health Personnel - ethics
Humans
Infectious Disease Transmission, Patient-to-Professional
Moral Obligations
moral theory
Motivation
philosophy
Physician-Patient Relations - ethics
Physicians - ethics
professional ethics
Public health
Public Health - ethics
Refusal to Treat - ethics
Social Responsibility
Terrorism
United States
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Summary:Numerous grounds have been offered for the view that healthcare workers have a duty to treat, including expressed consent, implied consent, special training, reciprocity (also called the social contract view), and professional oaths and codes. Quite often, however, these grounds are simply asserted without being adequately defended or without the defenses being critically evaluated. This essay aims to help remedy that problem by providing a critical examination of the strengths and weaknesses of each of these five grounds for asserting that healthcare workers have a duty to treat, especially as that duty would arise in the context of an infectious disease pandemic. Ultimately, it argues that none of the defenses is currently sufficient to ground the kind of duty that would be needed in a pandemic. It concludes by sketching some practical recommendations in that regard.
ISSN:1526-5161
1536-0075
DOI:10.1080/15265160802317974