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The scientific and ethical feasibility of immunity passports

There is much debate about the use of immunity passports in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have argued that immunity passports are unethical and impractical, pointing to uncertainties relating to COVID-19 immunity, issues with testing, perverse incentives, doubtful economic benefits, pr...

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Autores principales: Brown, Rebecca C H, Kelly, Dominic, Wilkinson, Dominic, Savulescu, Julian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7567527/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33075284
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30766-0
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author Brown, Rebecca C H
Kelly, Dominic
Wilkinson, Dominic
Savulescu, Julian
author_facet Brown, Rebecca C H
Kelly, Dominic
Wilkinson, Dominic
Savulescu, Julian
author_sort Brown, Rebecca C H
collection PubMed
description There is much debate about the use of immunity passports in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have argued that immunity passports are unethical and impractical, pointing to uncertainties relating to COVID-19 immunity, issues with testing, perverse incentives, doubtful economic benefits, privacy concerns, and the risk of discriminatory effects. We first review the scientific feasibility of immunity passports. Considerable hurdles remain, but increasing understanding of the neutralising antibody response to COVID-19 might make identifying members of the community at low risk of contracting and transmitting COVID-19 possible. We respond to the ethical arguments against immunity passports and give the positive ethical arguments. First, a strong presumption should be in favour of preserving people's free movement if at all feasible. Second, failing to recognise the reduced infection threat immune individuals pose risks punishing people for low-risk behaviour. Finally, further individual and social benefits are likely to accrue from allowing people to engage in free movement. Challenges relating to the implementation of immunity passports ought to be met with targeted solutions so as to maximise their benefit.
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spelling pubmed-75675272020-10-19 The scientific and ethical feasibility of immunity passports Brown, Rebecca C H Kelly, Dominic Wilkinson, Dominic Savulescu, Julian Lancet Infect Dis Personal View There is much debate about the use of immunity passports in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some have argued that immunity passports are unethical and impractical, pointing to uncertainties relating to COVID-19 immunity, issues with testing, perverse incentives, doubtful economic benefits, privacy concerns, and the risk of discriminatory effects. We first review the scientific feasibility of immunity passports. Considerable hurdles remain, but increasing understanding of the neutralising antibody response to COVID-19 might make identifying members of the community at low risk of contracting and transmitting COVID-19 possible. We respond to the ethical arguments against immunity passports and give the positive ethical arguments. First, a strong presumption should be in favour of preserving people's free movement if at all feasible. Second, failing to recognise the reduced infection threat immune individuals pose risks punishing people for low-risk behaviour. Finally, further individual and social benefits are likely to accrue from allowing people to engage in free movement. Challenges relating to the implementation of immunity passports ought to be met with targeted solutions so as to maximise their benefit. Elsevier Ltd. 2021-03 2020-10-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7567527/ /pubmed/33075284 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30766-0 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Personal View
Brown, Rebecca C H
Kelly, Dominic
Wilkinson, Dominic
Savulescu, Julian
The scientific and ethical feasibility of immunity passports
title The scientific and ethical feasibility of immunity passports
title_full The scientific and ethical feasibility of immunity passports
title_fullStr The scientific and ethical feasibility of immunity passports
title_full_unstemmed The scientific and ethical feasibility of immunity passports
title_short The scientific and ethical feasibility of immunity passports
title_sort scientific and ethical feasibility of immunity passports
topic Personal View
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7567527/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33075284
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30766-0
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