Me-Me and Pandemic Ethics

Rosemary Flanigan
December 10, 2009

The growing "me-me-me attitude" of Americans rolls on unabated.

I have been planning our January ethics committee self-education on the ethical guidelines for pandemic preparedness and saw immediately that here, too, we are building a levee against me-me-me.

And it will be hard to sell it.

But thinking about and talking about these matters is a MUST. E.g., Is stockpiling some essentials unrealistic, pandering to our “self-sufficiency” ideal, or undervaluing the notion of mutual aid?

The same question could be asked of every hospital resource.

Whether people agree or disagree on the details, a forum or even lunch talk with colleagues can launch us into articulating how our actions reveal who we really are—and whether or not we want to be that person.

Link: "Listen to the People": Public Deliberation about Social Distancing Measures in a Pandemic, American Journal of Bioethics, November 2009