Ethical dilemmas in COVID-19 times: how to decide who lives and who dies?

Author:

Neves Nedy M. B. C.1ORCID,Bitencourt Flávia B. C. S. N.2ORCID,Bitencourt Almir G. V.3ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Universidade Salvador, Brasil

2. Fleury Medicina e Saúde, Brasil

3. A.C.Camargo Cancer Center, Brasil

Abstract

SUMMARY The respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is a pandemic that produces a large number of simultaneous patients with severe symptoms and in need of special hospital care, overloading the infrastructure of health services. All of these demands generate the need to ration equipment and interventions. Faced with this imbalance, how, when, and who decides, there is the impact of the stressful systems of professionals who are at the front line of care and, in the background, issues inherent to human subjectivity. Along this path, the idea of using artificial intelligence algorithms to replace health professionals in the decision-making process also arises. In this context, there is the ethical question of how to manage the demands produced by the pandemic. The objective of this work is to reflect, from the point of view of medical ethics, on the basic principles of the choices made by the health teams, during the COVID-19 pandemic, whose resources are scarce and decisions cause anguish and restlessness. The ethical values for the rationing of health resources in an epidemic must converge to some proposals based on fundamental values such as maximizing the benefits produced by scarce resources, treating people equally, promoting and recommending instrumental values, giving priority to critical situations. Naturally, different judgments will occur in different circumstances, but transparency is essential to ensure public trust. In this way, it is possible to develop prioritization guidelines using well-defined values and ethical recommendations to achieve fair resource allocation.

Publisher

FapUNIFESP (SciELO)

Subject

General Medicine

Reference21 articles.

1. Coronavirus: a clinical update of COVID-19;Cespedes MS;Rev Assoc Med Bras,2020

2. Fair allocation of scarce medical resources in the time of COVID-19;Emanuel EJ;N Engl J Med,2020

3. Towards an artificial intelligence framework for data-driven prediction of coronavirus clinical severity;Jiang X;CMC,2020

4. Prediction of criticality in patients with severe COVID-19 infection using three clinical features: a machine learning-based prognostic model with clinical data in Wuhan;Yan L;medRxiv,2020

5. Artificial intelligence vs COVID-19: limitations, constraints and pitfalls;Naudé W;AI Soc,2020

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3