The First- and Second-Order Ethical Reasons Approach: The Case of Human Challenge Trials.

At the height of the Covid pandemic, there was much discussion in the literature about using human challenge trials (HCTs) to expedite the development of effective Covid-19 vaccines. Historically, reluctance to fully accept HCTs has largely been due to potential conflicts with the principle of nonmaleficence in bioethics. Only a few commentators have explored this topic in depth.

Clinical decision-making process and distributive justice: The mediating role of economic analysis. Empirical evidence from Italy.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has not only tested the resilience of public health systems but also underscored the criticality of allocative choices on health resources. These choices, however, are not confined to health emergencies but are integral to public health decisions, which inherently grapple with limited resources. In this context, physicians play a pivotal role as the architects of clinical actions in various scenarios.

Plant biomass allocation advances our understanding of plant adaptation to environmental gradients: a commentary on 'Contrasting biomass allocations explain adaptations to cold and drought in the world's highest-growing angiosperms'.

This article comments on: Jiří Doležal, Thinles Chondol, Zuzana Chlumská, Jan Altman, Kateřina Čapková, Miroslav Dvorský, Pavel Fibich, Kirill A. Korznikov1, Adam T. Ruka1, Martin Kopecký, Martin Macek, Klára Řeháková, Contrasting biomass allocations explain adaptations to cold and drought in the world’s highest-growing angiosperms, Annals of Botany, Volume 134, Issue 3, 1 September 2024, Pages 401–414 https://doi.

A proposal for formal fairness requirements in triage emergency departments: publicity, accessibility, relevance, standardisability and accountability.

This paper puts forward a wish list of requirements for formal fairness in the specific context of triage in emergency departments (EDs) and maps the empirical and conceptual research questions that need to be addressed in this context in the near future. The pandemic has brought to the fore the necessity for public debate about how to allocate resources fairly in a situation of great shortage. However, issues of fairness arise also outside of pandemics: decisions about how to allocate resources are structurally unavoidable in healthcare systems, as value judgements underlie every allocative decision, although they are not always easily identifiable.