How Should Equity and Fairness Shape Emergency Standards of Care?

January 15, 2021 -
10:00am to 11:30am

Alex John London, PhD
Clara L. West Professor of Ethics and Philosophy and
Director of the Center for Ethics and Policy
Carnegie Mellon University

Nneka Sederstrom, PhD, MPH, MA
Clinical Ethicist, Children’s Minnesota and
Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesota

Abstract: In this shared colloquium, Dr. London will focus on the relationship between principles of distribution (e.g., give priority to group x) and the moral considerations that might ground or justify those principles. He will address two related moral considerations. The first is that fairness requires giving equal treatment to equals. The second is that in medical ethics we should avoid frameworks that commit us to holding that one kind of life is more valuable than another. Although these considerations constrain the space of morally permissible principles of distribution in interesting ways, these constraints aren’t as narrow as might be expected. Dr. Sederstrom will consider allocation issues from a perspective informed by critical race theory and the disparities that the current pandemic has revealed and exacerbated.

View online here.

This colloquium is sponsored by the Center for Bioethics & Health Law

Location and Address

Online