Does Libertarianism Provide a Justification for Vaccine Hesitancy?

Libertarian ideas of self-ownership and the priority of bodily autonomy have featured prominently in the political debate over vaccination programmes and the justifiability or otherwise of restricting the liberty of the unvaccinated. In this article we look at a selection of recent right-libertarian literature to show that there is a considerable divergence between the application of consistent libertarian principles to this issue by academic libertarians and the strident opposition to vaccination programmes and vaccine mandates expressed by people who profess to be libertarians in the public-political debate.

The Politics of Covid Vaccine Hesitancy and Opposition.

Opposition to vaccines is not a new phenomenon, but positions once associated with traditional religious or conservative stances have given way to some highly disparate views that transcend traditional left/right/religious divisions. This article reviews recent literature showing how social media has contributed to the spread of conspiracy theories around Covid-19 and mass vaccination programmes. The narratives discussed are principally those of the right and the religious right.

Semantic annotation for computational pathology: multidisciplinary experience and best practice recommendations.

Recent advances in whole-slide imaging (WSI) technology have led to the development of a myriad of computer vision and artificial intelligence-based diagnostic, prognostic, and predictive algorithms. Computational Pathology (CPath) offers an integrated solution to utilise information embedded in pathology WSIs beyond what can be obtained through visual assessment. For automated analysis of WSIs and validation of machine learning (ML) models, annotations at the slide, tissue, and cellular levels are required.

Understanding the ethical and legal considerations of Digital Pathology.

Digital Pathology (DP) is a platform which has the potential to develop a truly integrated and global pathology community. The generation of DP data at scale creates novel challenges for the histopathology community in managing, processing, and governing the use of these data. The current understanding of, and confidence in, the legal and ethical aspects of DP by pathologists is unknown.

Ethical issues in computational pathology.

This paper explores ethical issues raised by whole slide image-based computational pathology. After briefly giving examples drawn from some recent literature of advances in this field, we consider some ethical problems it might be thought to pose. These arise from (1) the tension between artificial intelligence (AI) research-with its hunger for more and more data-and the default preference in data ethics and data protection law for the minimisation of personal data collection and processing; (2) the fact that computational pathology lends itself to kinds of data fusion that go against data ethics norms and some norms of biobanking; (3) the fact that AI methods are esoteric and produce results that are sometimes unexplainable (the so-called 'black box'problem) and (4) the fact that computational pathology is particularly dependent on scanning technology manufacturers with interests of their own in profit-making from data collection.