Representing Animals: Moral and Epistemic Limits for Protection Against Cruelty.

Some philosophers argue that animals should be included in the democratic system, with people acting as their representatives in voting on issues that concern them. This article contends that, while animals' rights are fundamentally important, granting people rights to represent animals in democratic processes may lead to the opposite of what we want. Or worse, it may put animals' interests and rights at significant risk.

The Instrumentalization of Public Health Issues for Propaganda by the Far-Right.

Political opportunism of the far-right threatens the efficacy of public health policies and political stability in general. In this commentary, we outline some of the ways that the European far-right has misused public health concerns as propaganda tools. This is a significant threat to the goals of making health and science more inclusive, and we recommend some policies for mitigating the racist effect of the far-right.

Colonial and Neocolonial Barriers to Companion Digital Humans in Africa.

This letter responds to the essay "Digital Humans to Combat Loneliness and Social Isolation: Ethics Concerns and Policy Recommendation," by Nancy S. Jecker, Robert Sparrow, Zohar Lederman, and Anita Ho, in the January-February 2024 issue of the Hastings Center Report.

A Sino-African perspective and the morality of procreation.

Current studies of anti/-natalism have been carried out mainly in the context of western philosophy. In this article, we offer a pro-natalist view based on Confucian and Afro-communitarian philosophy (Sino-African ethics). Grounded in this Sino-African perspective, we uphold that there is, at least, one reason to believe that not only is it morally permissible to procreate, but also that on some occasions, procreating is what morality prescribes.

An African moral approach against the perverted faculty argument: Ukama, partiality and homophobia in Africa.

In Africa, homosexuality is routinely understood as a form of immoral behaviour. This has great implications for the physical and psychological well-being of homosexuals in Africa. One of the reasons why homosexuals are sometimes understood to be behaving immorally is because it is believed that same-sex relations are unnatural.

Justifying a morally permissible breach of contract: kantian ethics, nozickian justice, and vaccine patents.

Although some have argued that COVID-19 vaccine patents are morally justified, a broader argument on the morality of breaching contracts is necessary. This article explores the ethics of breaching unfair contracts and argues that it is morally justified to breach contracts with pharmaceutical companies concerning vaccine patents. I offer two arguments to support this view.

Public health and Christian theism in Africa: An approach to evil and religious belief in the afterlife.

Religious beliefs may significantly impact the effectiveness of health policies. In this article, I analyse how Christian theistic beliefs about evil and suffering, in connection with belief in the afterlife, have unreasonable ethical implications in the context of African epistemologies. Further, I contend that such Christian theistic beliefs have a negative impact on health policies, especially during the current pandemic.

Addressing exploitation and inequities in open science: A relational perspective.

There are concerns that participation in open science will lead to various forms of exploitation - of researchers and scholars in low-income countries and under-resourced institutions. This article defends a contrary thesis and demonstrates the exact ways the underexplored notions of communal relationships, human dignity and social justice - and the normative principles to which they give rise - grounded in African philosophy can usefully address critical concerns regarding exploitation in the sharing of research resources to facilitate open partnership/collaboration and reuse. Further research is required to study the specific roles different institutions can play in facilitating open practice and contribute towards establishing effective structures that can enhance equity and balance unfavourable power asymmetries.

Operative public values as a tool for healthcare decisions: the social value and clinical criteria of triage.

With the current pandemic, many scholars have contended that clinical criteria offer the best way to implement triage. Further, they dismiss the criteria of social value as a good one for triage. In this paper, I respond to refute this perspective.

Racism without racists and consequentialist life-maximizing approaches to triaging.

Consequentialist life-maximizing approaches to triaging prescribe that everyone ought to have an equal chance of living a typical lifespan, through the saving more life-years (or saving most lives) principle, which emphasizes the youngest-first principle and in some cases a lottery approach, often at the expense of the old and the sick. Although this approach has already been criticized by several bioethicists, this article provides a different kind of criticism to the life-cycle viewpoint, one that has not yet been explored at length; namely, we contend that the life-maximizing approach entails a form of racism without racists in its attitude towards Black people. More specifically, we contend that by neglecting the idea that current societies are not post-racial, it privileges White individuals and disadvantages Black people in the triaging process, curtails equal opportunities for Black people, reinforces white normativity, and neglects African culture.

Afro-Communitarianism and the Duties of Animal Advocates within Racialized Societies: The Case of Racial Politics in South Africa.

Animal advocates world-wide have been accused of campaigns immured in racism. Some authors have argued that for animal advocates to avoid this accusation they should simultaneously engage with racial discrimination issues when advocating for animal welfare/rights. This prescription has been mostly explored in the context of the Global North and by looking at Western normative theory.

Injustice for the sake of public health: Freeing prisoners in Portugal during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This case study analysis looks at Portuguese policy during the COVID-19 pandemic whereby convicts were freed for the sake of public health. I defend this policy negatively by refuting the argument that suggested it involved various forms of injustice.

Social Justice for Public Health: The COVID-19 Response in Portugal.

The COVID-19 pandemic requires emergency policies to be put in place in order to avoid a global health catastrophe. At the same time, there has been an increasing preoccupation that argues urgent policies for public health neglect social justice. By looking at Portugal's successful confinement case during the early stages of the pandemic, I argue that ethically driven social justice policies are not just compatible but also an instrumentally important element in addressing this pandemic in an effective way.