Threat of pandemic leads to Ethics of Vaccines’ project
Panel will craft ethical guidelines
The Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has begun an 18-month project to examine the field of vaccine development and use and to propose an ethical framework to help guide researchers, pharmaceutical companies, public health agencies, health care providers, and citizens regarding vaccines and their safe, effective, and ethical use.
A team of physicians, public health officials, academics from the University of Pennsylvania and other leading institutions, media representatives, and others have begun deliberations to lay the groundwork for the project.
"Just as Hurricane Katrina uncovered a number of very unacceptable realities associated with our nation’s preparedness and our response to the poorest of our citizens, the prospect of an avian flu pandemic — and it is still a prospect — is bringing into sharp focus where we need to prioritize our energies in terms of the ethics around the role of vaccine in global public health," says Arthur Caplan, PhD, director of Penn’s Center for Bioethics and chair of the department of medical ethics at the medical school.
To that end, the Ethics of Vaccines project has assembled a team of experts from the academic, governmental, and private-sector communities to provide an in-depth examination of the issues. "Our goal is to develop a robust ethical framework to help move this area of our public health infrastructure forward," notes Caplan.
Caplan says the record of accomplishment in the vaccines field is extraordinary, and vaccines will continue to play a significant role in reducing or eliminating infectious diseases globally. "But the headlines, editorials, and talk-show analyses on the avian flu pandemic’ underscore the long-overdue need to develop a supporting and coherent ethics framework around vaccines," he explains.
After monitoring the global vaccines field for the past year, Penn’s Center for Bioethics received initial funding to launch a series of interdisciplinary seminars to engage issues surrounding the ethics of vaccines.
For more information about the project, go to http://www.bioethics.upenn.edu/vaccines/.
Swiss hospital to allow on-premise assisted suicide
Suicide not viewed as routine’
Beginning this year, the main hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland, will allow assisted suicides to take place on its premises under carefully monitored conditions.
Although assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland in cases of incurable disease involving mentally competent patients, no hospital in the country has permitted the practice on site. Moreover, hospitals have denied access to the Swiss voluntary euthanasia group known as Exit.
After almost three years of discussions, however, Vaud University Hospital officials determined that permitting the practice on site is proper under the guidelines established by the Swiss Medical Association and the National Committee on Ethics. Both organizations acknowledge that while assisted suicide should never be viewed as a routine procedure, it should be permitted in exceptional situations to respect the independent decision of a competent patient.
The conditions imposed by the hospital are that an assisted suicide will be permitted on site provided the patient is competent, too ill to return home, and has consistently expressed the wish to die.
The new rule at University Hospital will also allow the individual patients wishing to terminate their lives to have access (at the hospital) to a doctor from the outside or a member of Exit.
Rhode Island might extend hospitals’ ethics codes
Rhode Island is the latest of several states taking steps to extend strict ethics codes beyond hospitals’ clinical personnel, to CEOs, boards of directors, and trustees.
Rhode Island lawmakers are pursuing legislation imposing a strict code of ethics on hospital administrators, in the wake of the disclosure of questionable expenses by the president of Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence.
Lt. Gov. Charles J. Fogarty plans to submit legislation to hold executives and directors of Rhode Island hospitals to higher standards of "transparency and accountability." Fogarty’s comments followed reports in the media of luxury travel taken by hospital President Robert A. Urcuioli that were billed to the hospital. In addition, Urcuioli and the hospital are targets of a federal grand jury investigation into the hospital’s hiring of a former state senator as a consultant.
"Unfortunately, as we have seen with Blue Cross in Rhode Island and Enron and WorldCom nationally, some of these higher-ups think that a company is their private domain," explains Fogarty, who adds that he is asking state regulators to increase financial disclosure requirements on hospitals regarding executive pay and expenses.
The Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has begun an 18-month project to examine the field of vaccine development and use and to propose an ethical framework to help guide researchers, pharmaceutical companies, public health agencies, health care providers, and citizens regarding vaccines and their safe, effective, and ethical use.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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