COVID-19 and global bioethics
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Abstract
The global phenomenon of a pandemic has reactivated the notion of global bioethics, arguing that mainstream bioethics insufficiently addresses the pandemic experience. This experience highlights connectedness, differential vulnerability, unexpectedness and unpreparedness. During the pandemic, ethical concerns are framed in a specific way. This article examines three ways of framing: with the notions of exceptionality, controllability, and binarity. It then discusses the framework of global bioethics providing a broader and inclusive perspective on the pandemic experience. A fundamental notion in this framework is relationality. It also accentuates that individual and common interests are not opposed. A third consideration in this perspective is solidarity. A global bioethics framework is an incentive to rethink globalization, global governance, public health, and healthcare. If bioethics as a social and global endeavor mobilizes the moral imagination in order to expand the scope of moral concern by applying the human capacity to empathize, it crucially contributes to enhancing social life and civilization.
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