News and blogs

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics (NCOB) is exploring how ethical considerations can help to inform policy decisions when weighing-up options available for combatting health impacts of climate change.

Michael Reiss, Council Member and Professor of Science Education, shares insight into our new scoping paper on health, climate change and ethics.

We have published a paper identifying where key ethical issues are arising in efforts to respond to the health impacts of climate change, and proposing a set of principles that can assist in considering these within policy making decisions.

We have published ethics tools to help decision-makers develop a proportionate response to public health threats.

We welcome the announcement that COVID-19 vaccination will not become a condition of deployment for all healthcare workers in England until the spring.

In relation to pandemic policy in England, the absence of sustained ethical discourse at the level of government has created fundamental challenges to establishing how responsibility should be understood—practically, and as a matter of principle.

Trust in those developing, offering, and promoting vaccines plays a key role in decisions about the uptake of vaccines, says a new briefing note from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.

I followed the example of Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, who, in the wake of the announcement of two successful COVID-19 vaccines, stated that he had encouraged his elderly mother ‘to be ready.’ I did the same.

The prospect of safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19 is good news for everyone towards the end of a grim year. Of course, caution is still advisable with as yet no certainty as to how long the vaccine might work or whether there might be adverse side effects for certain groups. There are also a host of ethical issues that need to be addressed.

“It is the miracle jab that promises hope of an end to the pandemic and a longed-for return to normality.” So begins a piece by The Daily Mail’s science correspondent Victoria Allen this week…