Transcriber: Eunice Tan Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
In an emergency,
such as the current COVID-19 pandemic,
governments have at least two important responsibilities.
The first is to provide information to citizens about what's happening,
why,
and for how long.
Secondly, governments must provide citizens
with guidance as to what they should do,
sometimes backed by legal penalties for non-compliance,
and, again, they should explain why citizens are being asked to do this
and for how long.
UK government has a strategy,
and at the same time, it is committed, in the words of the prime minister,
to 'maximum transparency'.
Yet in explaining the strategy to the public,
the government has continued to insist on a single mantra:
that it is led by 'the science'.
There are two problems with this.
Firstly, there is no such thing as 'the science'.
Scientists disagree, sometimes quite radically,
and science progresses by contestation of and debate about competing claims.
Second, science alone is not enough to justify a strategy:
you need values.
Indeed, science and values are often inextricably mixed.
To give two examples -
social isolation may, science tells us,
work to reduce the rate of infection.
But we need to ask a moral question.
There are particular social groups -
the old, the vulnerable, single -
who will be particularly disadvantaged by social isolation.
What then do we owe them by way of support?
Second,
a contact-tracing app, such as has been proposed for phones,
may work very well to reduce or mitigate transmission rates.
But, again, we need to ask a moral question:
is the possible loss to individual privacy by having such an app on your phone
more than outweighed by the gains to public health?
So a government needs to do ethics
even if it says it doesn't and needn't do ethics,
rather in the way that, famously,
Alastair Campbell interrupted Prime Minister Tony Blair by saying,
'We don't do God.'
So what is it to do ethics?
In the first place, what one often finds is a shopping list of principles,
such as respect for persons,
equity,
minimising loss of lives,
maximising benefits.
But there are at least three problems with listing principles in this way.
First, there is the question,
well, why these principles and not some others?
Doesn't it seem arbitrary to pick out these particular principles?
And one is reminded of the famous joke by Groucho Marx:
'Well, these are my principles.
Well, if you don't like them, here are some others.'
Secondly, principles can conflict,
and we need to know how to deal with such conflicts.
How are principles to be ranked?
Are some more important than others?
Indeed, are some of paramount importance?
And, lastly, we need to know
how to move from general principles to particular moral judgements.
For instance, it's often said
that in dealing with priority amongst COVID-19 patients,
we should use a principle of equity or fairness.
But what exactly does fairness demand in this particular situation?
Does it, for instance, demand
that we should give priority to the young over the old?
So if a government must do ethics,
we need people who are qualified, competent, and skilled
to assist the government in this way,
and that is people who are trained in ethics and moral philosophy.
There are examples in other jurisdictions
of national ethics committees composed of people trained in moral philosophy
who will assist the government in law and policy.
The German national ethics committee and the French national ethics committee
are good examples of that.
But there is no such thing in the UK.
It is not enough in this particular case
to use committees or stakeholders
or caring and compassionate citizens,
the wise and the good,
or whatever.
We need people with a particular skill in the subject of ethics,
just as science committees that advise government
need competent and trained scientists
to help them.
Now, bear in mind this is not a case
of people from on high offering ethical advice to the population
that must then be followed.
Rather, it is a question of helping the public and the government
to make sense of the ethical issues,
to render our judgements consistent and coherent,
to tease out what are the relevant considerations
and how they should be balanced.
Above all else,
ethics advice is something that should be done clearly and transparently.
It is not something that should be done in locked rooms,
unminuted,
and in secret.
Because at the end of the day,
consideration of ethical matters must be by the public in a transparent fashion.
In this particular pandemic,
we are going to face very difficult choices.
And some of us are going to have to make more difficult choices than others.
Those choices are essentially moral ones,
and we need to know why they're moral ones,
and we need to know how to address and resolve them.
We need, in short, to do ethics.