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  1. Relaxing Mask Mandates in New Jersey: A Tale of Two Universities.Wesley J. Park - 2022 - Voices in Bioethics 8.
    The ethical question is whether university mask mandates should be relaxed. I argue that the use of face masks by healthy individuals has uncertain benefits, which potential harms may outweigh, and should therefore be voluntary. Systematic reviews by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections concluded that the use of face masks by healthy individuals in the community lacks effectiveness in reducing viral transmission based on moderate-quality evidence. The only two randomized controlled trials of face masks published (...)
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  2. COVID-19 and the unseen pandemic of child abuse.Wesley J. Park & Kristen A. Walsh - 2022 - BMJ Paediatrics Open 6 (1).
    For children, the collateral damage of the COVID-19 pandemic response has been considerable. In this paper, we use the framework of evidence-based medicine to argue that child abuse is another negative side effect of COVID-19 lockdowns. While it was certain that school closures would have profound social and economic costs, it remains uncertain whether they have any effect on COVID-19 transmission. There is emerging evidence that lockdowns significantly worsened child abuse on a global scale. Low-income and middle-income countries are particularly (...)
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  3. 175 An ethical analysis of evidence-based medicine.Wesley J. Park - 2022 - BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine 27 (Suppl 1):A48.
    Evidence-based medicine is a clinical decision-making framework which makes claims about what physicians ought to do. Though heralded as the cutting edge of medical science, evidence-based medicine is a value-laden normative theory which implicitly depends on substantive views regarding what is morally good or right. In this paper, I provide an ethical analysis of evidence-based medicine. I consider its normative underpinnings in three ethical theories: utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and virtue ethics. In the face of uncertainty, evidence-based medicine endorses expected utility (...)
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  4. 16 The logic of lockdowns: a game of modeling and evidence.Wesley J. Park - 2022 - BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine 27 (Suppl 1):A59.
    Lockdowns, or modern quarantines, involve the use of novel restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to suppress the transmission of COVID-19. In this paper, I aim to critically analyze the emerging history and philosophy of lockdowns, with an emphasis on the communication of health evidence and risk for informing policy decisions. I draw a distinction between evidence-based and modeling-based decision-making. I argue that using the normative framework of evidence-based medicine would have recommended against the use of lockdowns. I first review the World (...)
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  5. 143 An ethical analysis of evidence-based medicine.Wesley J. Park - 2022 - BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine 27 (Suppl 2):A12.
    Evidence-based medicine is a clinical decision making framework which makes claims about what physicians ought to do. Though heralded as the cutting edge of medical science evidence-based medicine is a value laden normative theory which implicitly depends on substantive views regarding what is morally good or right. In this paper, I provide an ethical analysis of evidence-based medicine. I consider its normative underpinnings in three ethical theories: utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and virtue ethics. In the face of uncertainty, evidence-based medicine endorses (...)
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