1 An introduction to ethics

What are ethics? What does it mean to be ‘ethical’?

Ethics is a process of understanding, evaluating and recommending a set of principles that guide human behaviour. We all practice ethics in our daily decision-making: it is about deciding, as individuals and societies, what we consider to be ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ based on a set of rules or standards that governs proper conduct.

Our approach to determining ethical issues can change over time in response to new information, emerging values and different ways of seeing the world.

Watch this short video (McCombs School of Business, 2018a) to find out more about ethics:

Video 1 What are ethics?
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Activity 2: Ethical issues in medicine and society

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Can you identify some ‘ethical’ issues you are familiar with in the medical research sector?

One example is the use of animals in research, such as for developing drugs. What do you think makes the use of animals for drug development an ‘ethical’ issue? You may want to consider why animals are used, whether it is right or wrong to use animals in this way, and how using animals for drug-testing can be justified.

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Discussion

Many topics are thought of as ‘ethical issues’ in the medical and research sector. One way to recognise an ethical issue is when different members of society do not share the same views about what is right or wrong.

Your thoughts about whether it is right or wrong to use animals for testing, and how their use can be justified, may be very different to someone else’s.

Arriving at ethical decisions is not always easy; pondering one ethical dilemma can often lead to more. For example, using animals in research may be justified to develop safe and effective drugs, but which species is it acceptable to use in research? Is it acceptable to use mice, but not dogs? Is one species more important than another?

This example is just one of many ethical issues in medical research. We will be discussing similar issues throughout the module.

Morals are what each person believes to be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. They are based on a set of principles and values at societal or individual levels, and can vary between societies and individuals.

You can learn more about morals by watching this short video (McCombs School of Business, 2018b):

Video 2 What are morals?
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The terms ‘ethics’ and ‘morals’ are often used interchangeably. However, they are distinguishable: ethics is typically associated with a set of rules or standards within a community or professional setting (for example, a medical code of ethics); morals are typically associated with an individual’s own values and principles (Gert and Gert, 2020).

One of the branches of ethics relevant to AMR, and thus to this module, is ‘applied ethics’. Applied ethics seeks to answer practical issues of moral importance: for example, whether a wealthy country is morally obliged to provide Covid-19 vaccines to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) that are unable to access sufficient vaccines for their populations, for reasons of cost or availability.

Healthcare ethics and animal ethics are particularly relevant to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which will be discussed in the following sections.

Introduction

1.1 Healthcare ethics