In light of the latest events related to the pandemic of coronavirus, multiple discussions related to infectious diseases and the ethical considerations related to them tend to arise more frequently. The ethics behind health care workers’ duties in the times of pandemics are questioned from the perspective of the limits of duties and responsibilities when the life and safety of a medical professional are endangered. The intensified addressing of the problems related to infections that occur more frequently across the globe triggers an in-depth and radical re-thinking of the view of viral pandemics. It is argued that the radicalization of approaches to interpreting human existence is necessary due to the inevitable and threatening outcomes of the recent pandemics.
The COVID-19 global crisis has triggered a multifaceted discussion of ethical and ecological issues that accompany the viral pandemic. The ethics of health care under the circumstances of infection epidemics are to be questioned due to the high risks to doctors’ and nurses’ health and life safety. According to Malm et al. (2008), the “risk versus responsibility” discussion has shifted with time (p. 5). Earlier, nurses might refuse to treat a patient based on their status of having a dangerous infectious disease. However, now it is officially declared that “care should be delivered without prejudice, and it makes no allowance for the use of personal attributes, socioeconomic or health status as grounds for discrimination” (Malm et al., 2008, p. 5). However, with the rising intensity and scale of the infectious diseases spread, the power of influence of health care institutions and preventative measures decreases and the need for more radical approaches to pandemics intensifies.
When addressing viral pandemics, it is required not to take the perspective of developing new methods and ethics of treatment but the perspective of a fundamental restructuring of thinking patterns about the disease. David Quammen explicitly manifests his vision of the inherent connection between humans and other species on the planet as the core of understanding pandemics (TEDx Talks, 2013). The central concept in his discussion is a zoonosis, which is an “animal infection transmissible to humans” (TEDx Talks, 2013, 00:03:23-00:03:37). The connectedness between humans and animals is inherent in the Darwinian Theory, which is why humans are part of nature and, form a certain perspective, are regarded as animals (TEDx Talks, 2013). The very possibility of the same bacteria and viruses to impact both animals and humans predetermine the rooted connectivity. According to Quammen, when an infection is first transmitted from an animal to a human, this process is called a spillover (TEDx Talsk, 2013). The transmission of an infection endangers all species on the planet, establishing a greater level of interdependence between them, including humans.
Disruptions and connectivity are the two key reasons that explain why spillovers tend to occur more frequently around the world and tend to have more severe outcomes for humanity. The Darwinian perspective explains the belonging of human beings to nature and their inevitable dependence on it. In addition to connectivity, disruptions, or human damage to the environment by means of construction, industrial development, natural resources exhaustion, add to the intrusion of humans to natural habitats. Such disruptions cause spillovers of viruses that otherwise would never reach humans. In conclusion, it is imperative to promote a radical vision of viral pandemics from the perspective of Darwinian theory to eliminate the root cause of the problem.
References
Malm, H., May, T., Francis, L. P., Omer, S. B., Salmon, D. A., & Hood, R. (2008). Ethics, pandemics, and the duty to treat. The American Journal of Bioethics, 8(8), 4-19.
TEDx Talks (2013). Every new pandemic starts as a mystery | David Quammen | TEDxBozeman [Video]. YouTube.