Vatican calls for ‘ethics of risk’ against COVID-19

The Pontifical Academy for Life calls for solidarity vis-à-vis pandemic. The virus “is the result, more than the cause, of financial greed, the self-indulgence of life styles defined by consumption indulgence and excess.” What is more, “It is clear that the pandemic is worsening the inequalities that already are associated with processes of globalization, making more people vulnerable and marginalized without health care, employment, and social safety nets.”

Vatican City (AsiaNews) – The Pontifical Academy for Life released a paper on the effects of the pandemic. Titled Humana Communitas in the age of pandemic: untimely meditations on life’s rebirth, it starts from the realisation that human “fragility” has been made worse by the pandemic.

The document notes that “all of us may succumb to the wounds of disease, the killing of wars, the overwhelming threats of disasters.” However, there are “very specific ethical and political responsibilities toward the vulnerability of individuals who are at greater risk for their health, their life, their dignity.”

For the Academy, this calls for a "conversion" towards a sense of responsibility and international solidarity, regardless of borders and political systems. specifically, “COVID-19 is the most recent manifestation of globalization,” and sparing no one, it “has made us all equally vulnerable, all equally exposed. Such a realization has come at a high cost.”

The “lesson of fragility” touches everyone, especially hospital patients, prison inmates, and refugees. “COVID-19 is not just the result of natural occurrences. What happens in nature is already the result of a complex intermediation with the human world of economical choices and models of development”. The pandemic “is the result, more than the cause, of financial greed, the self-indulgence of life styles defined by consumption indulgence and excess.”

The pandemic shows us that everything is interconnected and that the “depredation of the earth,” greed-based economic choices and excessive consumption, as well as “prevarication and disregard” of creation have had consequences on the spread of the virus. This has been terrible for poor countries, who have had to pay the highest prices as they lack basic resources and suffer from other deadly diseases, like malaria and TB.

The “plight of the ‘developed’ world looks more like a luxury: only in rich countries people can afford the requirements of safety. In those not so fortunate, on the other hand, ‘physical distancing’ is just an impossibility due to necessity and the weight of dire circumstances: crowded settings and the lack of affordable distancing confront entire populations as an insurmountable fact. The contrast between the two situations throws into relief a strident paradox, recounting, once more, the tale of disproportion in wealth between poor and rich countries. “

For this reason, “It is clear that the pandemic is worsening the inequalities that already are associated with processes of globalization, making more people vulnerable and marginalized without health care, employment, and social safety nets.”

Shared vulnerability and specific responsibilities towards people, including health, life and dignity are more at risk, and require national international cooperation. We must also realise “that a pandemic cannot be withstood without adequate medical infrastructure, accessible to everyone at the global level. Nor can the plight of a people, suddenly infected, be dealt with in isolation, without forging international agreements, and with a multitude of different stakeholders. The sharing of information, the provision of help, the allocation of scarce resources, will all have to be addressed in a synergy of efforts.”

This perspective must recognise “Access to quality health care and to essential medicines” as a “universal human right”. [. . .] “Ultimately, the moral, and not just strategic, meaning of solidarity is the real issue in the current predicament faced by the human family. Solidarity entails responsibility toward the other in need, itself grounded in the recognition that, as a human subject endowed with dignity, every person is an end in itself, not a mean.”

This requires “responsible scientific research,” which must be free conflicts of interests and be based on the principles of equality, freedom and fairness. In the end, “The good of society and the demands of common good in the area of health care come before any concern for profit.”

In light of this, the World Health Organisation plays an important role in specifically meeting “the needs and concerns of less developed countries coping with an unprecedented catastrophe.”

Last but not least, the quest for a vaccine transcends national borders. “[O]nce available in the future,” the “only acceptable goal, consistent with a just allocation of the vaccine, is access for all without exceptions.” The time has come “to imagine and implement a project of human coexistence that allows a better future for each and every one.” (FP)