Julian Sheather

One of the extraordinary things about this pandemic has been the sheer scale of ethical problems that it's given rise to.

The first thing you need to do is to be very, very alive to the fact that this is a value issue.

It is not just a technical issue.

It is not just a matter of doing sums.

It's really saying, well, what are the values in place?

Let's identify what values are in place.

So on the one hand, you know, economic goods are not just about cash.

It's not just about cold, hard, indifferent cash.

If we don't have a functioning economy, how do we fund the health service?

These goods are profoundly interconnected and making these complex calls is a huge exercise in political ethics.

But we need to be clear, very, very clear that these are value based choices.

And once we've identified that values are engaged, we can begin to dig down

into what the actual issues are.

You begin to see a big, big call on health services.

Well, what happens if you have to choose between different people?

Who gets access to fundamental life-saving goods, ventilators, ECMO machines?

All of these kinds of issues take on ethical ramifications at a slightly different level.

And then you go down to individual clinician, patient-facing dilemmas.

Or how do you feel when you look at what's being put out there?

I mean, one of the things at the moment is given some of the decisions that doctors may have to make, they're not making them now, we hope they don't ever have to make them.