Ethical ramifications of H1N1 vaccine priority groups

Jul 31 2009

Pregnant women are among the groups that should receive H1N1 (swine) flu vaccinations this fall, according to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices panel whose recommendations are generally accepted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Other groups that should receive priority inoculations are health care workers and their children, children and young adults ages six months through 24 years, parents and other caregivers of infants, and nonelderly adults with high-risk medical conditions.

Dr. Ruth Faden, director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, is available to discuss the ethical ramifications of this recommendation and other morally challenging dimensions of pandemic influenza, health care reform, and research involving pregnant women.

Dr. Faden, along with bioethicists from other leading universities, published an article in the July 9 online issue of the American Journal of Public Health urging organizers of a recently begun $3 billion, decades-long study of children's health to immediately add provisions to look at the health and medical profiles of the children's mothers during their pregnancies.

Ruth Faden, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics; Director, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics; Professor, Department of Health Policy & Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Professor, Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She is also a Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University.

Dr. Faden is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on biomedical ethics and health policy including Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy (with Madison Powers), A History and Theory of Informed Consent (with Tom L. Beauchamp), AIDS, Women and the Next Generation (Ruth Faden, Gail Geller and Madison Powers, eds.), and HIV, AIDS and Childbearing: Public Policy, Private Lives (Ruth Faden and Nancy Kass, eds.). Dr. Faden is a member of the Institute of Medicine and a fellow of the Hastings Center and the American Psychological Association. She has served on several national advisory committees and commissions, including the President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, which she chaired. Current research interests include the ethics of health care policy, infectious disease, cellular engineering, research with human subjects, and global health. Dr. Faden holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in general studies in humanities from the University of Chicago and an M.P.H. and Ph.D. (Program in Attitudes and Behavior) from the University of California, Berkeley.