A transcontinental discussion on the moral and medical ethical dilemmas posed by the COVID-19 crisis, featuring a panel of distinguished doctors, philosophers, and ethicists. In partnership with Columbia Global Centers | Amman, Columbia Global Centers | Istanbul, and Columbia Global Centers | Nairobi.
The four dilemmas:
Responsibility (2 min 12 seconds)
Smadar Bustan, PhD, the organiser, is a philosopher, ethicist and scientist at the University of Paris Diderot.
Mirco Nacoti, MD, is an emergency, anesthesia and intensive care physician in Bergamo, Italy.
Fairness (31 min 05 seconds)
Katherine Fischkoff, MD, MPA, is an Acute Care Surgeon and intensivist at Columbia University and is the Medical Director of the Surgical Step Down Unit.
Mylène Botbol-Baum, PhD, Professor in the faculty of Medicine, member of the Biomedical Ethics Unit ( HELESI ), Ethics Committee (INSERM France) and Professor in the Philosophy Department, at Université Catholique de Louvain in Brussels, Belgium.
Dignity (1 hour 00 min 27 sec)
Laure Madé, is a practicing Covid-19 Nurse at Hospital Bichat, Paris and Epidemiologist.
Rita Charon, MD, PhD, is Chair of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University. A general internist and literary scholar, she is the founder of the discipline of narrative medicine.
Honoring Death (1 hour 32 min 32 seconds)
Meinhard Kritzinger, MD, is a specialist in anesthesia and intensive care with diploma in tropical medicine and public health.
Jeremy R. Simon, MD, PhD, is an emergency physician, medical ethicist and philosopher of medicine on the faculty of Columbia University.
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic obliged us all to handle many dilemmas, some of which we took upon ourselves as philosophers, ethicists, doctors and nurses to discuss around four key ethical notions : responsibility, dignity, fairness and honouring death. The following collection of the symposium acts held online in May 2020 with the Paris Global Center of Columbia University and Columbia Global Centers, attempts to testify to the ongoing pandemic emergency and difficult challenges while evaluating whether the ethical principles in the official recommendations were able to meet the lived reality. Looking at accountability and consistency in regard to the context of exercise, it seemed equally important to examine, through an international exchange, whether the contextuality of Coronavirus across countries and cultures affected the ethical decision making processes. We hope that our discussion can serve as a resource for advanced care planning, helping medical providers and other specialists to consider the shared important aspects of medical ethics in times of great uncertainty.