RESUMO
Risk is a concept that is usually evaluated by scientists and public health experts by comparing probabilities. However, this ethical utilitarian perspective, which considers that the best decision is the one that has less probability of harm than of benefit, does not consider normative aspects based on other ethical perspectives. Interpreting the origin of public controversies arising from people's reactions to the small risks of attenuated SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and evaluating the responses of public institutions requires an understanding of both the cognitive aspects that introduce systematic biases in the assessment of probabilities and the sociological, ethical, and political framework that contextualizes risk management in modern societies.
Assuntos
COVID-19 , SARS-CoV-2 , Vacinas contra COVID-19 , Cognição , Humanos , Saúde PúblicaRESUMO
Overdiagnosis is an emerging and unexpected phenomenon in medicine with multiple causes: social, cognitive and technical. The most prevalent ethical assessment is the utilitarian one: in medicine it is not ethical to carry out any intervention with a negative benefit risk balance. However, there are non-utilitarian moral criteria, based on principles or individual rights, and personal utilities that must also be considered in the decision-making processes. The ethical approach of overdiagnosis has to be carried out from an ethics of responsibility that contemplates principles and consequences assuming that the decisions of managers, clinicians and citizens will introduce different moral perspectives. The solutions go through training and research; have a reliable biomedical knowledge; avoid conflicts of interest, both business and organizational, and improve shared decision-making in the public, clinical and individual spheres.
