Ethical guidelines for the allocation of scarce intensive care units during the COVID-19 pandemic: Discussing a Brazilian proposal.

Rationale: In the context of a major health crisis, health professionals must first compare patients' recovery prospects, thus giving priority to the goal of saving the greatest number of lives.

Aims And Objectives: Critically evaluate a protocol for allocation of scarce intensive care units (ICU), which the authors proposed at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and originally published in two Brazilian newspapers; and compare that protocol with similar proposals, particularly with 2 successive protocols issued by the Brazilian Critical Care Association. The main objective is to highlight the advantages of the authors' approach and discuss some criticisms that has been levelled against the proposed protocol after its original publication in 2020.

The difficult crossroads of decisions at COVID-19: how can the deontology implicit in Evidence-Based Medicine help us to understand the different attitudes of doctors at this time?

One of the struggles faced by physicians in clinical decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic is how to deal with already available or lacking scientific evidence. The COVID-19 pandemic has a large impact in the routine of the many health services, including surgery, which demanded changes in assist protocols. Questions began to arise about well-established surgery conducts due to situations related to SARS-COV-2 infection, and, according to public health measures that are necessary to fight the pandemic.

An agency model of consent and the standards of disclosure in health care: Knowing-how to reach respectful shared decisions among real persons.

Objective: In this article, we evaluate and compare the frailties of two different standards of disclosure of information regarding the risks of medical procedures applied in recent judicial decisions in the United Kingdom. As an alternative, we present the tenets and philosophical grounds of an agency model of consent and a person-based standard of disclosure.

Methods: Critical philosophical analysis of the background assumptions of two standards of disclosure and their relative "tests of negligence" applied in recent legal judgements in the United Kingdom.

Tying care and respect into a single bioethical principle: On Dall'Agnol's respectful care theory.

Objective: In this article, we offer an extended critical review of a new conception of bioethics, presented by Darlei Dall'Agnol, in the book Care and Respect in Bioethics.

Methods: Critical philosophical analysis of background assumptions of a new approach to bioethics, enriched with critical discussion of related philosophical literature.

Results: In Care and Respect in Bioethics, through an approach filled with hard cases, Dall'Agnol argues that the metaethics of respectful care has theoretical advantages over the intuitionist metaethics of principlism and the particularism of casuistry, offering an original comprehensive approach that crosses the three dimensions of ethical inquiry: metaethical, normative, and applied ethics.

The Misfortunes of Moral Enhancement.

In Unfit for the Future, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu present a sophisticated argument in defense of the imperative of moral enhancement. They claim that without moral enhancement, the future of humanity is seriously compromised. The possibility of ultimate harm, caused by a dreadful terrorist attack or by a final unpreventable escalation of the present environmental crisis aggravated by the availability of cognitive enhancement, makes moral enhancement a top priority.

Health as a clinic-epidemiological concept.

I propose a clinic-epidemiological concept of health as the best description of what physicians actually think about health within medical practice. Its aim is to be an alternative to the best approach in the philosophy of medicine about health, Christopher Boorse's biostatistical theory. Contrary to Boorse's 'theoretical' approach, I propose to take health as a practical clinical concept.