Ethical challenges in health and biomedical research: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented health and economic challenges in mankind's history. At the same time, human civilization is facing a great ethical crisis. The duty- vs. right-based moral values led to justified dilemmas in the ethical decision-making process of health care providers, especially physicians. On the one hand, the duty towards the patients affected by the highly contagious virus (often in the face of PPE shortages) and the right (as individuals) to preserve themselves and family members, on the other hand, is difficult to solve only by a legal framework. The rationing of life-saving measures (like HFNC, ICU beds, or Ventilators) in the context of acute shortages is another example of physicians and managers needing to make very difficult ethical choices. Revelation of the self-centered nature of individual human beings, families, social groups, and even countries has been widely noticed during the pandemic, and it may not be a surprising phenomenon. However, the crisis has brought to the forefront the traditional debates on the relative merits of utility-, duty- and right-based ethics from a wider social perspective. The illusory blessings of the globalized market economy and associated neoliberal ethical principles have faced critical questions throughout these years. The rise of ultranationalism has been exposed with its vulgar faces worldwide. It is now obvious that the worst sufferers of the pandemic are poorer and marginalized people (forming the major bulk of the world population) who are now increasingly subject to rapidly increasing health and socioeconomic inequality and injustice due to the existing world order. Managing the pandemic through authoritarian approaches (lockdown, tracking, etc.) has also raised certain fundamental ethical issues related to human dignity, freedom, and autonomy, and, in many cases, the pandemic has been used to justify specific ideological platforms. Ethics of biomedical and health-related research (and their dissemination) also face some basic questions regarding the sacrifice of some age-old scientific and moral practices in the face of humanity's urgent need. Critical discussion and working consensus on those ethical issues have become urgent for biomedical research's future advancement.

J. Bangladesh Acad. Sci. 48(2); 141-145: December 2024