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Session III Q&A: Global Health: Treatment as Prevention || 7th Annual Program in Ethics and Health

367 views · Published 1 May 2012 · 49:04 · Indexed 28 October 2026

Channel: Harvard University · 2012 · Education

Session Chair: Till Bärnighausen, M.D., Ph.D., Sc.D.
Assistant Professor of Global Health, Harvard School of Public Health

Max Essex, Ph.D.
Mary Woodard Lasker Professor of Health Sciences, Harvard School of Public Health

Till Bärnighausen, M.D., Ph.D., Sc.D.
Assistant Professor of Global Health, Harvard School of Public Health

Johann Frick, Ph.D. candidate
Department of Philosophy, Harvard University

Jonathan Wolff, B.A., M.Phil.
Professor, Centre for Philosophy, Justice and Health, University College London

This conference focuses on how decision makers and the public tend to feel more strongly obligated to assist "identified" people at risk than to assist "statistical" ones, and the implications for public policy. To illustrate, when a group of Chilean miners were stranded following a 2010 mine accident, the rescue mission garnered worldwide support and millions of dollars, but the public had not felt a similar need to invest in mine safety measures that would have saved more statistical lives. What factors trigger or explain this difference in attitude and behavior? How is it manifested when we think about global health problems, such as treatment and prevention (and "treatment as prevention") for HIV/AIDS? Does the law express such bias? Is there any ethical justification for this bias, for example, as a matter of obligation toward each and every individual? Is it, alternatively, a moral error, rooted in well-known cognitive biases?

Session III Q&A: Global Health: Treatment as Prevention || 7th Annual Program in Ethics and Health

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