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Biomedical engineering and ethics: reflections on medical devices and PPE during the first wave of COVID-19

In March 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that humanity was entering a global pandemic phase. This unforeseen situation caught everyone unprepared and had a major impact on several professional categories that found themselves facing important ethical dilemmas. The article revolves...

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Autores principales: Maccaro, Alessia, Piaggio, Davide, Dodaro, Concetta Anna, Pecchia, Leandro
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8466698/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34563173
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-021-00697-1
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author Maccaro, Alessia
Piaggio, Davide
Dodaro, Concetta Anna
Pecchia, Leandro
author_facet Maccaro, Alessia
Piaggio, Davide
Dodaro, Concetta Anna
Pecchia, Leandro
author_sort Maccaro, Alessia
collection PubMed
description In March 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that humanity was entering a global pandemic phase. This unforeseen situation caught everyone unprepared and had a major impact on several professional categories that found themselves facing important ethical dilemmas. The article revolves around the category of biomedical and clinical engineers, which were among those most involved in dealing with and finding solutions to the pandemic. In hindsight, the major issues brought to the attention of biomedical engineers have raised important ethical implications, such as the allocation of resources, the responsibilities of science and the inadequacy and non-universality of the norms and regulations on biomedical devices and personal protective equipment. These issues, analyzed one year after the first wave of the pandemic, come together in the appeal for responsibility for thought, action and, sometimes, even silence. This highlights the importance of interdisciplinarity and the definitive collapse of the Cartesian fragmentation of knowledge, calling for the creation of more fora, where this kind of discussions can be promoted.
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spelling pubmed-84666982021-09-27 Biomedical engineering and ethics: reflections on medical devices and PPE during the first wave of COVID-19 Maccaro, Alessia Piaggio, Davide Dodaro, Concetta Anna Pecchia, Leandro BMC Med Ethics Debate In March 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that humanity was entering a global pandemic phase. This unforeseen situation caught everyone unprepared and had a major impact on several professional categories that found themselves facing important ethical dilemmas. The article revolves around the category of biomedical and clinical engineers, which were among those most involved in dealing with and finding solutions to the pandemic. In hindsight, the major issues brought to the attention of biomedical engineers have raised important ethical implications, such as the allocation of resources, the responsibilities of science and the inadequacy and non-universality of the norms and regulations on biomedical devices and personal protective equipment. These issues, analyzed one year after the first wave of the pandemic, come together in the appeal for responsibility for thought, action and, sometimes, even silence. This highlights the importance of interdisciplinarity and the definitive collapse of the Cartesian fragmentation of knowledge, calling for the creation of more fora, where this kind of discussions can be promoted. BioMed Central 2021-09-25 /pmc/articles/PMC8466698/ /pubmed/34563173 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-021-00697-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Debate
Maccaro, Alessia
Piaggio, Davide
Dodaro, Concetta Anna
Pecchia, Leandro
Biomedical engineering and ethics: reflections on medical devices and PPE during the first wave of COVID-19
title Biomedical engineering and ethics: reflections on medical devices and PPE during the first wave of COVID-19
title_full Biomedical engineering and ethics: reflections on medical devices and PPE during the first wave of COVID-19
title_fullStr Biomedical engineering and ethics: reflections on medical devices and PPE during the first wave of COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed Biomedical engineering and ethics: reflections on medical devices and PPE during the first wave of COVID-19
title_short Biomedical engineering and ethics: reflections on medical devices and PPE during the first wave of COVID-19
title_sort biomedical engineering and ethics: reflections on medical devices and ppe during the first wave of covid-19
topic Debate
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8466698/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34563173
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-021-00697-1
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