A Companion to Public Philosophy

7Disability, Bioethics, and the Duty to Do Public Philosophy During a Global Pandemic

JOSEPH A. STRAMONDO

People are dying! Shame on you!

—ADAPT (chant used at disability rights protests)

1 Introduction

In March 2020, I was scared. Of course, I was not alone. Many people were scared as a global public health crisis unfolded around us. Some of us were scared for our own health or that of close friends and family. Others were afraid of the impact that the COVID‐19 pandemic would have on their employment status or their 401K savings. Parents were worried about how sheltering in place would impact their children’s development, and many elderly people who were already far too isolated were completely shut off from loved ones as nursing homes locked down and kids or grandkids were forced to keep their distance.

I shared many of these worries. However, as I saw reports coming out of Italy that disabled and older people were being turned away from hospitals in an effort to prioritize those who would “benefit most” from health resources, my worries both broadened and sharpened into focus (Parodi et al. 2020). On what grounds were these decisions being made? How were doctors and hospitals accounting for discriminatory bias against disabled, chronically ill, and elderly people?

As a disabled bioethicist and philosopher of disability, I had seen disability discrimination in healthcare before. In some sense, it is par for the course for disability to be disvalued in a way that deprioritizes ...