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17th June 2021: Research seminar online - Karolina Wiśniowska (Jagiellonian University): Covid-19 vaccinations: ethics of prioritization policies
We have the pleasure to invite you for a research seminar in the ‘BIOUNCERTAINTY’ research project. The seminar will take place on Thursday, 10th June, at 5:30 pm on MS Teams (link below).
Abstract: How do the theoretical concepts of allocating scarce resources work in practice in medicine? To investigate this problem, we collected data on the COVID-19 vaccination prioritization policies of 30 countries. We then compared this data to the two prevailing approaches in bioethical literature: the utilitarian and the egalitarian positions.
Our aim was to answer the following question: which values are taken into consideration when policymakers encounter a public health emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic in practice? From two broader sets of values (utilitarian and egalitarian), we distinguished between certain specific values and then compared them to actual policies. Our results show that generally countries neither lean towards utilitarian nor egalitarian values, mostly presenting a pragmatic approach to the given problem. In my talk, I will also offer an analysis on populist tendencies in the policies of the researched countries.
Karolina Wiśniowska is an assistant researcher in the Interdisciplinary Centre for Ethics in the BIOUNCERTAINTY project. She is working on populism in bioethical discourse and its influence over medical policy for her dissertation. Karolina is interested mainly in ethics, bioethics, human rights, philosophy of law as well as social and political philosophy.