Disaster Bioethics: Normative Issues When Nothing is Normal: Normative Issues When Nothing is Normal

✍ Scribed by Dónal P. O’Mathúna, Bert Gordijn, Mike Clarke (auth.), Dónal P. O’Mathúna, Bert Gordijn, Mike Clarke (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2014
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 220
• Series: Public Health Ethics Analysis 2
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book provides an early exploration of the new field of disaster bioethics:

examining the ethical issues raised by disasters. Healthcare ethics issues are addressed in the first part of this book. Large-scale casualties lead to decisions about who to treat and who to leave behind, cultural challenges, and communication ethics. The second part focuses on disaster research ethics.

With the growing awareness of the need for evidence to guide disaster preparedness and response, more research is being conducted in disasters. Any research involving humans raises ethical questions and requires appropriate regulation and oversight. The authors explore how disaster research can take account of survivors? vulnerability, informed consent, the sudden onset of disasters, and other ethical issues. Both parts examine ethical challenges where seeking to do good, harm can be done. Faced with overwhelming needs and scarce resources, no good solution may be apparent. But choosing the less wrong option can have a high price. In addition, what might seem right at home may not be seen to be right elsewhere. This book provides in-depth and practical reflection on these and other challenging ethical questions arising during disasters.

Scholars and practitioners who gathered at the Brocher Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland in 2011 offer their reflections to promote further dialogue so that those devastated by disasters are respected by being treated in the most ethically sound ways possible.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-viii
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
Disaster Bioethics: An Introduction....Pages 3-12
Macro-triage in Disaster Planning....Pages 13-32
Ethics and Emergency Disaster Response. Normative Approaches and Training Needs for Humanitarian Health Care Providers....Pages 33-48
Triage in Disaster Medicine: Ethical Strategies in Various Scenarios....Pages 49-63
When Relief Comes from a Different Culture: Sri Lanka’s Experience of the Asian Tsunami....Pages 65-76
Ethical Issues in Health Communications: Strategies for the (Inevitable) Next Pandemic....Pages 77-93
Evidence and Healthcare Needs During Disasters....Pages 95-106
Front Matter....Pages 107-107
Interests Divided: Risks to Disaster Research Subjects vs. Benefits to Future Disaster Victims....Pages 109-127
Purple Dinosaurs and Victim Consent to Research in Disasters....Pages 129-141
Setting Disaster Research Priorities....Pages 143-157
Studying Vulnerable Populations in the Context of Enhanced Vulnerability....Pages 159-173
Research Ethics Governance in Disaster Situations....Pages 175-190
Ethical Concerns in Disaster Research—A South African Perspective....Pages 191-204
Back Matter....Pages 205-219

✦ Subjects

Ethics; Social Sciences, general