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Annals of Palliative Medicine Sep 2023Moral challenges with addiction and overdosing have resulted from the abundance of opioids, but the coronavirus disease of 2019 has prompted reflection on ethical issues...
Moral challenges with addiction and overdosing have resulted from the abundance of opioids, but the coronavirus disease of 2019 has prompted reflection on ethical issues that could arise from a shortage. Driven by a duty to plan, some jurisdictions have formed committees to see if standard allocation considerations extend to cover a shortage of opioid pain medication. The problem, we argue, is that the standard allocation protocols do not apply to a shortage of opioids because prognosis only has limited relevance and the moral disvalue of pain is not dependent upon a patient's status as a frontline worker, age, or residence in a disadvantaged community. While the use of lotteries in allocation schemes has been deemphasized in standard allocation schema, we argue for and outline the details of a tiered lottery that first prioritizes opioids needed for emergent procedures and then moves on to allocate opioids based on the severity of a patient's pain. Additionally, we argue that some deception, in the form of withholding information from patients about the implementation and details of a pain lottery, is ethically permissible to address the unique moral tension between transparency and beneficence that arises for the treatment of pain in conditions of opioid scarcity.
Topics: Humans; Analgesics, Opioid; Pain; Morals
PubMed: 37164967
DOI: 10.21037/apm-22-1278 -
The Angle Orthodontist Nov 2023
Topics: Ethical Relativism; Morals
PubMed: 37922390
DOI: 10.2319/050423-324.1 -
The Canadian Veterinary Journal = La... Aug 2023
Topics: Animals; Ethics, Medical; Education, Veterinary; Ethics; Veterinary Medicine
PubMed: 37529385
DOI: No ID Found -
Annual Review of Psychology Jan 2024Nearly five billion people around the world now use social media, and this number continues to grow. One of the primary goals of social media platforms is to capture and... (Review)
Review
Nearly five billion people around the world now use social media, and this number continues to grow. One of the primary goals of social media platforms is to capture and monetize human attention. One means by which individuals and groups can capture attention and drive engagement on these platforms is by sharing morally and emotionally evocative content. We review a growing body of research on the interrelationship of social media and morality as well its consequences for individuals and society. Moral content often goes viral on social media, and social media makes moral behavior (such as punishment) less costly. Thus, social media often acts as an accelerant for existing moral dynamics, amplifying outrage, status seeking, and intergroup conflict while also potentially amplifying more constructive facets of morality, such as social support, prosociality, and collective action. We discuss trends, heated debates, and future directions in this emerging literature.
Topics: Humans; Social Media; Morals; Punishment; Social Support
PubMed: 37906950
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-022123-110258 -
Personality and Social Psychology... Aug 2023The idea of "purity" transformed moral psychology. Here, we provide the first systematic review of this concept. Although often discussed as one construct, we reveal ~9... (Review)
Review
ACADEMIC ABSTRACT
The idea of "purity" transformed moral psychology. Here, we provide the first systematic review of this concept. Although often discussed as one construct, we reveal ~9 understandings of purity, ranging from respecting God to not eating gross things. This striking heterogeneity arises because purity-unlike other moral constructs-is not understood by what it but what it : obvious interpersonal harm. This poses many problems for moral psychology and explains why purity lacks convergent and divergent validity and why purity is confounded with politics, religion, weirdness, and perceived harm. Because purity is not a coherent construct, it cannot be a distinct basis of moral judgment or specially tied to disgust. Rather than a specific moral domain, purity is best understood as a loose set of themes in moral rhetoric. These themes are scaffolded on cultural understandings of harm-the broad, pluralistic harm outlined by the Theory of Dyadic Morality.
PUBLIC ABSTRACT
People are fascinated by morality-how do people make moral judgments and why do liberals and conservatives seem to frequently disagree? "Purity" is one moral concept often discussed when talking about morality-it has been suggested to capture moral differences across politics and to demonstrate the evolutionary roots of morality, especially the role of disgust in moral judgment. However, despite the many books and articles that mention purity, there is no systematic analysis of purity. Here, we review all existing academic articles focused on purity in morality. We find that purity is an especially messy concept that lacks scientific validity. Because it is so poorly defined and inconsistently measured, it should not be invoked to explain our moral minds or political differences.
Topics: Humans; Morals; Judgment; Disgust; Politics; Religion
PubMed: 36314693
DOI: 10.1177/10888683221124741 -
Annual Review of Psychology Jan 2024Moral psychology was shaped around three categories of agents and patients: humans, other animals, and supernatural beings. Rapid progress in artificial intelligence has... (Review)
Review
Moral psychology was shaped around three categories of agents and patients: humans, other animals, and supernatural beings. Rapid progress in artificial intelligence has introduced a fourth category for our moral psychology to deal with: intelligent machines. Machines can perform as moral agents, making decisions that affect the outcomes of human patients or solving moral dilemmas without human supervision. Machines can be perceived as moral patients, whose outcomes can be affected by human decisions, with important consequences for human-machine cooperation. Machines can be moral proxies that human agents and patients send as their delegates to moral interactions or use as a disguise in these interactions. Here we review the experimental literature on machines as moral agents, moral patients, and moral proxies, with a focus on recent findings and the open questions that they suggest.
Topics: Animals; Humans; Artificial Intelligence; Morals; Intelligence
PubMed: 37722750
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-030123-113559 -
Perfusion Mar 2024Early in 2022 the first pig to human cardiac xenotransplant was performed. The graft initially performed well, and rejection was well controlled. However, the graft... (Review)
Review
Early in 2022 the first pig to human cardiac xenotransplant was performed. The graft initially performed well, and rejection was well controlled. However, the graft failed, and the patient died 60 days after the procedure. The ethical issues relating to xenotransplantation include the risk/benefit to the individual, the risk of porcine-derived infectious agents crossing into humans, animal welfare and rights, issues of human and animal identity and concerns relating to fair allocation of organs and appropriate use of resources.These ethical issues are often addressed using emotional arguments, or through consequentialist or deontological lens. An alternative is to use approaches based on virtue ethics to understand the moral purpose () of the research and the virtues (character traits) needed to be a good research clinician. In this review we will consider the virtues of justice, courage, temperance and practical wisdom, as well as the role of clinical curiosity, and their application to xenotransplantation. This provides an alternative approach for the clinical academic and others involved in the research to reflect on their practice.
Topics: Humans; Animals; Swine; Virtues; Transplantation, Heterologous; Morals; Ethical Theory; Social Justice
PubMed: 36382884
DOI: 10.1177/02676591221140767 -
The Canadian Veterinary Journal = La... Aug 2023
Topics: Animals; Ethics, Medical; Education, Veterinary; Veterinary Medicine; Ethics
PubMed: 37529387
DOI: No ID Found -
The Canadian Veterinary Journal = La... Dec 2023
Topics: Animals; Ethics, Medical; Education, Veterinary; Ethics; Veterinary Medicine
PubMed: 38046424
DOI: No ID Found -
The Canadian Veterinary Journal = La... Nov 2023
Topics: Animals; Ethics, Medical; Education, Veterinary; Ethics; Veterinary Medicine
PubMed: 37915777
DOI: No ID Found