Home Care in America: The Urgent Challenge of Putting Ethical Care into Practice.

Home care is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States, providing valuable opportunities for millions of older adults and people with disabilities to live at home rather than in institutional settings. Home care workers assist clients with essential activities of daily living, but their wages and working conditions generally fail to reflect the importance of their work. Drawing on the work of Eva Feder Kittay and other care ethicists, we argue that good care involves attending to the needs of another out of a concern for their well-being. Such care should be standard in the home care system. Yet, because of the pervasive racial, gender, and economic inequalities that the home care industry perpetuates, home care workers and their clients cannot reasonably be expected to care about each other. We endorse reforms aimed at enabling home care workers and their clients to form and maintain professional relationships that cultivate care..

The Ethics of Repurposing Previously Collected Research Biospecimens in an Infectious Disease Pandemic.

In the early days of a pandemic, repurposing biospecimens from established research projects could prove to be extraordinarily useful in achieving substantial and timely public health benefits. Nonetheless, there are potential ethical and regulatory uncertainties that may impede access to those valuable biospecimens. In this article, we argue that there should be a presumption in favor of using previously collected identifiable research biospecimens without reconsent to directly address an infectious disease pandemic, assuming certain conditions are met. This argument fills a unique yet critical gap in decision-making where the specific consent accompanying the identifiable biospecimens would not otherwise permit repurposing. Further, it suggests that even if gaining reconsent is feasible, doing so in a fast-moving crisis is not necessary. This analysis also attempts to address the ethical concerns of public health authorities who already may have the power to use such specimens but are reluctant to do so.