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GS Paper: GS4-07.Public/Civil Service Values and Ethics in Public Administration

  • What are Immunity Passports?

    There is a growing debate for a rethink on “immunity passport” to be handed out to those who have recovered from COVID-19 for the purpose of travel or work without restrictions of quarantine.

    Try this question form mains:

    Q.Discuss various ethical issues evolved during the outbreaks of pandemics (of the scale of COVID-19).

    Immunity Passports

    • They are the recovery or release certificate or a document attesting that its bearer is immune to a contagious disease.
    • The concept has drawn much attention during the COVID-19 pandemic as a potential way to contain the pandemic and permit faster economic recovery.
    • The can be used as a legal document granted by a testing authority following a serology test demonstrating that the bearer has antibodies making them immune to a disease.

    What is the ongoing debate?

    • Experts argue that if reinfections were a significant problem, by now, there would have been hundreds or at least thousands of cases of reinfections at the global level.
    • Till such time effective vaccines become available people who have recovered from COVID-19 should be permitted to travel without restrictions.

    A case for consideration

    • Immune protection after infection/disease is always much more robust than most vaccines, and definitely than most COVID-19 vaccines in development.
    • Some of the vaccines undergoing clinical trials are mostly directed at a single or a couple of proteins (spike) of the virus.
    • But vaccines under trial that use the inactivated coronaviruses would expose the immune system to a whole range of viral proteins, much like natural infection and can produce immune responses.
    • However, it is not known if people who have experienced asymptomatic infection would show robust immune responses like those who have recovered from moderate or severe disease.

    Ethical issues involved

    • Issuing ‘immunity certificates’ to people who have recovered can be an ethical minefield.
    • Doctors do not generally prefer immunity to be induced by natural infection compared with vaccines. It seems logical, but there are multiple challenges.
    • There might be long-term health complications in those who had COVID-19, whereas the vaccine will have minimal or no adverse health consequences.
    • There is a danger that similar arguments will be made for other vaccine-preventable diseases for which we have a universal immunisation programme.

    There is also a public health risk of issuing immunity certificates:

    • People whose livelihood has have been affected would be encouraged to adopt risky behaviour so as to get infected rather than taking precautions to stay protected from the virus.
    • This would lead to a sharp increase in cases across the country with huge numbers requiring hospitalization.
    • Such a situation would lead to testing capabilities getting overwhelmed, crumbling of the health-care systems and increased deaths.

    Threats over malpractices:

    • Immunity certification will include a system for identification and monitoring, thus compromising privacy.
    • Other contentious issues would be profiteering by private labs performing tests, and the menace of fake certificates which we have already seen in some Indian states.
    • In the end, an immunity passport will further divide the society with different ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.

    Way forward

    • We need to look at COVID-19 with a sense of balance and not hysteria.
    • Terms such as immunity passports may not have relevance as we do not know anything about specific kinds of immune responses and the duration of protection in people.
    • There is currently not enough evidence about the effectiveness of antibody-mediated immunity to guarantee the accuracy of an ‘immunity passport’ or ‘risk-free certificate’.
    • The permission to travel or work should be decided on a case by case basis, according to the principles of ethics while dealing with a pandemic.

  • Supreme Court to examine Kerala Act on animal, bird sacrifices

    The Supreme Court has agreed to examine the constitutional validity of the Kerala Animals and Birds Sacrifices Prohibition Act of 1968 that prohibits sacrifice of animals and birds in temples to ‘please’ the deity.

    Try this question for mains:

    Q. The ritual slaughters of animals in India is a greater ethical issue than a legal one. Analyse.

    The dichotomy over ritual slaughter

    • The Supreme Court is set to analyse how the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960 allows the killing of animals but prohibits cruelty to animals.
    • It highlighted the “dichotomy” in animal protection law that allows the killing of animals for food but does not permit “killing of animals for an offer to a deity and then consumption”.

    Why did SC interfere?

    • However, the 1968 Kerala law bans the killing of animals and birds for religious sacrifices but not for personal consumption.
    • This amounted to arbitrary classification.

    Legal protections to Animal sacrifice

    • The Kerala Act criminalizes the intent behind the animal sacrifice and not animal sacrifice per se.
    • If the sacrifice is not for propitiating any deity but for personal consumption even in the precincts of the temple, it is not forbidden.
    • Section 28 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 1960 does not make the killing of animals for religious purposes and offence.

    Appeal citing the necessity of the practice

    • The oral remarks came in an appeal filed by P.E. Gopalakrishnan and some others, who are Shakthi worshippers, and for whom, animal sacrifice is an integral part of the worship.
    • In their appeal, they said the animal sacrifice was an “essential religious practice” and the High Court had no power to interfere.

    Why animal sacrifice needs a rethink?

    • All religions call for compassion, no religion requires killing or eating animals and hacking animals to death with weapons.
    • The way executioners handle, transport and kill animals for sacrifices typically violates animal transport and slaughter laws, making it a punishable offence.
    • There exist ample ambiguities in religious texts over allowing the ritual slaughter of animals.
    • Moreover, the practice of animal sacrifice normalizes killing and desensitizes humans to violence against animals.

  • How ‘Vaccine Nationalism’ could block vulnerable populations’ access to COVID-19 vaccines

    Hundreds of COVID-19 vaccine candidates are currently being developed. Many countries are securing priority access to doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

    Practice question for Mains:

    Q. What is Vaccine Nationalism? Discuss various ethical issues involved and its impact on vulnerable populations across the globe.

    Vaccine nationalism during COVID-19

    • Vaccine nationalism occurs when a country manages to secure doses of vaccine for its own citizens or residents before they are made available in other countries.
    • This is done through pre-purchase agreements between a government and a vaccine manufacturer.
    • Vaccine nationalism is harmful to equitable access to vaccines.

    US begins to secure

    • In India, the privately held Serum Institute is developing one of the leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates.
    • The Serum Institute signalled that, if the development of the vaccine succeeds, most of the initial batches of the vaccine will be distributed within India.
    • At the same time, India, alongside the US and Russia, chose not to join the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator.
    • This was a WHO moves to promote collaboration among countries in the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.

    Vaccine nationalism is not new

    • During the early stages of the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, some of the wealthiest countries entered into pre-purchase agreements with several pharmaceutical companies working on H1N1 vaccines.
    • At that time, it was estimated that, in the best-case scenario, the maximum number of vaccine doses that could be produced globally was two billion.
    • The US alone negotiated and obtained the right to buy 600,000 doses. All the countries that negotiated pre-purchase orders were developed economies.
    • Only when the 2009 pandemic began to unwind and demand for a vaccine dropped did developed countries offer to donate vaccine doses to poorer economies.

    Issues with such nationalism

    • The most immediate effect of vaccine nationalism is that it further disadvantages countries with fewer resources and bargaining power.
    • It deprives populations in the Global South from timely access to vital public health goods.
    • Taken to its extreme, it allocates vaccines to moderately at-risk populations in wealthy countries over populations at higher risk in developing economies.
    • Vaccine nationalism also runs against the fundamental principles of vaccine development and global public health.

    Why it is unethical?

    • Most vaccine development projects involve several parties from multiple countries.
    • With modern vaccines, there are very few instances in which a single country can claim to be the sole developer of a vaccine.
    • And even if that were possible, global public health is borderless. As COVID-19 is illustrating, viruses can travel the globe.

    Its impacts

    • If COVID-19 vaccines are not made available affordably to those who need them, the consequences will likely be disproportionately severe for poorer or otherwise vulnerable and marginalised populations.
    • Without broad access to a vaccine, these populations will likely continue to suffer more than others, leading to unnecessary disease burden, continued economic problems and potential loss of life.

    Conclusion

    • Nationalism is at odds with global public health principles. Yet, there are no provisions in international laws that prevent pre-purchase agreements like the ones described above.
    • There is nothing inherently wrong with pre-purchase agreements of pharmaceutical products.
    • Vaccines typically do not generate as much in sales as other medical products.
    • If used correctly, pre-purchase agreements can even be an incentive for companies to manufacture vaccines that otherwise would not be commercialized.

    Way forward

    • Equity entails both, affordability of vaccines and access opportunities for populations across the world, irrespective of geography and geopolitics.
    • Contracts should not trump equitable access to global public health goods.
    • Developed countries should pledge to refrain from reserving vaccines for their populations during public health crises.
    • The WHO’s Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator is a starting point for countries to test collaborative approaches during the current pandemic.
    • International institutions — including the WHO — should coordinate negotiations ahead of the next pandemic to produce a framework for equitable access to vaccines during public health crises.

  • Ethical Veganism

    An employment tribunal in the UK has ruled that “ethical veganism” is a philosophical belief and has to be protected by law against discrimination.

    What’s the issue about?

    • A man was fired from an animal welfare charity for raising concerns about its pension funds’ alleged investment in companies that use animal testing.
    • He for gross misconduct on insisting to ban fox-hunting and other types of recreational hunting in Britain.
    • The tribunal had to determine if ethical veganism fit the criteria of a religious or philosophical belief.
    • The tribunal determined that ethical veganism meets the test required to be a philosophical belief, because of which it is protected under the British Equality Act, 2010.
    • Many vegetarians claimed that they were discriminated at workplace for not eating meat. In his case, the tribunal had dismissed the case, calling his vegetarianism a lifestyle choice.

    Veganism, ethical veganism, and ethical vegetarianism

    • Broadly, a vegan person does not consume meat products and also products that are derived from animals (such as milk, eggs, etc).
    • ‘The Ethical Case for Veganism’ in the Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics, loosely defines veganism as a lifestyle choice to refrain from eating meat as well as products made from or by animals.
    • Ethical veganism, on the other hand, has been defined as the view that attaches a positive ethical valuation to a vegan lifestyle.
    • Significantly, ethical veganism is different from ethical vegetarianism — the latter makes a distinction between products made from animals, such as meat, and products made by animals, such as milk.
    • Ethical vegetarianism is opposed to products made from animals in particular.
    • There is also an ethical omnivorism, which permits the use of some animal products and may restrict the use of others based on some ethical criterion, say the authors of the Food Ethics paper.

    Types of ethical veganism

    • They mention two types of ethical veganism: broad absolutist veganism, under which it is always wrong to use any product made by or from animals, and modest ethical veganism, under which it is typically wrong to use products made from or by a range of animals including cats, dogs, cows, pigs, etc.
    • An example of the former category is a person who would not press a leather button, “even if doing so were necessary in order to avert global nuclear war”.
    • The reasons for adopting veganism as a lifestyle can range from wanting a better and healthier lifestyle, environmental, or religious reasons.

    Britain’s Equality Act

    • The act protects people from discrimination in the workplace and in the wider society in the UK.
    • The Act offers a basic framework of protection against direct and indirect discrimination, harassment, and victimisation in services and public functions, etc.
    • Under the Act, a belief is defined as any religious or philosophical belief.
    • Since the tribunal has ruled that ethical veganism is a philosophical belief, it is a protected characteristic under the Act.