RÉSUMÉ
The Covid-19 pandemic creates an unprecedented threatening situation worldwide with an urgent need for critical reflection and new knowledge production, but also a need for imminent action despite prevailing knowledge gaps and multilevel uncertainty. With regard to the role of research ethics in these pandemic times some argue in favor of exceptionalism, others, including the authors of this paper, emphasize the urgent need to remain committed to core ethical principles and fundamental human rights obligations all reflected in research regulations and guidelines carefully crafted over time. In this paper we disentangle some of the arguments put forward in the ongoing debate about Covid-19 human challenge studies (CHIs) and the concomitant role of health-related research ethics in pandemic times. We suggest it might be helpful to think through a lens differentiating between risk, strict uncertainty and ignorance. We provide some examples of lessons learned by harm done in the name of research in the past and discuss the relevance of this legacy in the current situation.
Sujet(s)
COVID-19/épidémiologie , Éthique de la recherche , Recherche biomédicale/éthique , COVID-19/thérapie , Essais cliniques à usage compassionnel/éthique , Droits de l'homme/éthique , Humains , IncertitudeRÉSUMÉ
Based on the fieldwork at two Norwegian Intensive Care Units, we wish to discuss the sometimes inconsistent manner in which death is handled, determined and made real by nurses and other healthcare personnel in high-tech hospital situations. These discrepancies draw our attention towards different ways of attending to the dying and dead and views about appropriate or inappropriate codes of professional behaviour. As we will argue below, the analytical tools developed by Annemarie Mol are useful for sharpening our understanding of the enactment of multiple ontologies of death as they are enacted within the ICU. Annemarie Mol and John Law's notion of 'ontological politics' increases our awareness about the non-arbitrary way some but not other practices are considered self-evident whereas others are denigrated as muddled and illogical.
