Featured Programs
Healthcare & Biotechnology Ethics
As medicine and technology advance, they offer healthcare providers increasing modalities of treatment and research, the choice of which clearly impact the survival and lives of patients. Healthcare resources are also in greater demand and consuming more government and private income than ever before. Pressure to control costs and access to resources exacerbates ethical issues and sparks questions of who gets what service, when and under what conditions.
BEI’s healthcare ethics programs empower decision-makers to navigate the rapidly advancing and costly medical landscape where the concepts of Do No Harm, Benefit, Fairness, Responsible Stewardship, and even right and wrong are often neither simple nor readily apparent.
BEI’s pharmaceutical and biotechnology programs empower companies to save and improve lives, improve the quality and abundance of food, and protect our environment responsibly.
Emergency Preparedness Ethics
Disasters —such as Hurricane Katrina, the terrorist attacks of 9-11 and a 1918-like pandemic influenza — are not a question of if, but of when. Disasters cause public health emergencies that disrupt health systems, elevate risks of morbidity and mortality, and result in acute shortages of essential medical resources and personnel. Ethics training related to the allocation of resources is critical to ensuring that medical providers can best promote increased survival rates without crises of conscious and/or legal liability risks.
BEI’s trainings providing an ethical framework to guide decision-making that helps practitioners bridge the acceptance gap between what should be done and why it should be done, thereby strengthening their capacity to adhere to basic triage principles and to address questions such as: Who should get what resources? When? And under what conditions? These questions are often life-or-death and are fundamental to responsible disaster and pandemic planning and response.
Disaster Facts
The Hurricane Katrina disaster stranded a medical center in ten feet of floodwater without sufficient food, fresh water and/or power for ventilators and lights. Clinicians faced emotionally, psychologically and ethically challenging choices for which they had no training or experience. After four grueling days in which many patients died from the heat and from dehydration, clinicians responded to the critical situation by administering what proved to be lethal doses of pain medicine to acute care patients. The clinicians were subsequently charged with second-degree murder. Such extreme ethical questions are rarely necessary in routine clinical settings, but they are an expected and distressing component when practicing medicine in a disaster.
An influenza pandemic, like all disasters, will involve a severe shortage of resources, especially ventilators and hospital staff. The national Pandemic Preparedness Plan states that, in a worst-case scenario, the country will need 742,500 ventilators—essential for survival of this deadly flu strain—while only 105,000 ventilators are currently available (100,000 are used during a normal flu season). Roughly, only one in seven people could receive a necessary ventilator in a pandemic.
The lack of an ethical framework is an essential and major gap in disaster preparedness, according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), HHS, DHS, CDC, and the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
Environmental Sustainability Ethics
The environment and climate change have a decisive influence on man’s health and the occurrence of natural disasters such as hurricanes. The problems looming on the horizon are complex and time is short. The balance of the ecosystem and the defense of the environment’s health need human responsibility and solidarity. BEI's initiatives respond to these needs by empowering responsible and informed decision-making that contribute to sustainable development and to alleviation of the causes of pollution.