The UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator is an initiative that brings UK ethics research expertise to bear on the multiple, ongoing ethical challenges arising during pandemics. We are a partnership between the Universities of Oxford, Bristol and Edinburgh, University College London, and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. The Ethics Accelerator provides rapid evidence, guidance and critical analysis to decision-makers across science, medicine, government and public health.
They are hosting a free, online conference to explore, examine, and explain how value judgments did, do, can, and should feature in public decision-making and policy. The event will both allow evaluation of how ethics has (not) featured in practice and planning during the COVID-19 pandemic, and allow understanding of how approaches in the future should be informed. Its focus will fall on questions of:
- Openness and transparency: how and why should the value judgments that direct decision-making be clear and accessible?
- Substantive ethical considerations: what should feature in discussions of values, and value trade-offs, in policy, and why?
- Mechanisms for assuring the place of ethics in policy and public decision-making: who can and should contribute, and how?
The conference is comprised of three hour-long sessions, each with a panel of experts. You are welcome to join for the whole conference or for individual panels.
- 11.00-12.00: Beyond ‘following the science’: value judgments and transparency in pandemic decision-making
- 12.00-13.00: The challenges of ‘real-time public ethics’: incorporating ethics expertise in public decision-making
- 13.00-14.00: Anticipating, identifying, and responding to ethical controversy and uncertainty
More information on the event, including the full programme