Bioethics During Wartime

Abstract: War creates unique ethical challenges for healthcare providers and researchers. Yet bioethics as a discipline has not actively engaged with the ethical challenges of healthcare during war. Accounts of such ethical dilemmas come not only from those operating in military or humanitarian aid contexts but also those continuing in their “usual” civilian jobs amidst armed conflict. This panel provides interdisciplinary and international perspectives on the ethical challenges of providing healthcare and conducting health research during war. Importantly, we will center the experiences of those on the ground. Our first speaker and panel moderator, an Irish expert in disaster bioethics, will review critiques of bioethics as ignoring war, introduce humanitarian ethics frameworks, and discuss their shortcomings for situations of armed conflict. Our second speaker, a Syrian empirical bioethicist, will share findings from in-depth qualitative interviews exploring the ethical challenges experienced by healthcare providers in Syria and their difficulties in applying traditional ethical frameworks for disasters within the context of revolution and war. The third speaker, an American empirical bioethicist, will share findings from another qualitative study examining ethical challenges conducting and reviewing health research during active conflicts around the world. The final speaker, a Ukrainian physician and bioethicist, will reflect on her personal experience providing humanitarian medical aid in her country since February 2022 and compare this with her previous humanitarian medical service in Iraq. Together, we hope to advance the engagement of American bioethics with the unique and complex ethical decisions required of clinicians and researchers during war.