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Summer 2006 |
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H
e a l t h P o l i c y
Medical ethics
and pandemics
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Submitted Photo |
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The CMA has created a
subcommittee to help it respond to ethical issues raised during a
communicable disease pandemic.
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By CMA Staff |
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The CMA has created a subcommittee to
help it respond to ethical issues raised during a communicable
disease pandemic. The initiative was launched at the April meeting
of the CMA Committee on Ethics and Council on Health Care and
Promotion, which will each provide two of the subcommittee’s four
members.
The pandemic threat, particularly as it
relates to avian influenza, has created serious concerns within
medicine, and not all of them are related specifically to the treatment
of illness.
Dr. Jeff Blackmer, the CMA’s director of
ethics, says pandemics raise numerous questions about physicians’
ethical obligations. For instance, are they ethically obligated to
provide care when this would put their own health in danger? If they are
obliged to do so, what reciprocal obligations does society owe them in
the event they become ill? What are the obligations of physicians who
lack the necessary training and expertise to respond to a pandemic?
“There is no shortage of issues that need
to be clarified,” noted Dr. Blackmer. “The goal of the subcommittee is
to provide both a proposed strategy and guidelines on the medical
profession’s response if and when a pandemic arrives.”
One tool the subcommittee will consult is
Stand on Guard for Thee, a 29-page study of the ethical
considerations that come into play during a pandemic. It was released
last November by the University of Toronto’s Joint Centre for Bioethics.
It concluded that four major ethical issues need to be considered:
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health workers’ duty to provide care;
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governments’ right to restrict
personal liberty in the interest of public health;
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the allocation of scarce resources;
and,
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implications for global governance,
including travel advisories.
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