COVID-19 as the underlying cause of death: disentangling facts and values.

Hist Philos Life Sci

Dipartimento di Scienze per la Qualità della Vita (QUVI) and Research Center for Philosophy of Health and Disease, University of Bologna, Corso di Augusto 237, 47921, Rimini, Italy.

Published: January 2021

In the ongoing pandemic, death statistics influence people's feelings and government policy. But when does COVID-19 qualify as the cause of death? As philosophers of medicine interested in conceptual clarification, we address the question by analyzing the World Health Organization's rules for the certification of death. We show that for COVID-19, WHO rules take into account both facts (causal chains) and values (the importance of prevention).

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7792913PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40656-020-00355-6DOI Listing

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