Philosopher César Palacios-González talks about how corruption and racism in Mexico created serious hurdles for developing federal guidelines for deciding who gets to access scarce medical resources. In Mexico, widespread corruption and racism create extra challenges for tackling the coronavirus pandemic: how can one prevent that affluent people buy their way into ICU or that people from certain ethnic groups are given priority acces to treatment? How can one prevent that the perceived social value of patients (e.g. the fact that they have children, are prisoners, have 'good' jobs...) determines whether they get treatment? Philosopher César Palacios-González (University of Oxford) talks about how these challenges affected the development of the federal guidelines for who gets to access scarce medical resources.
Video
https://www.youtube.com/embed/KmepcSCZ3d0
About the Series
Thinking Out Loud provides a series of videos and audio-podcasts produced by Katrien Devolder in which she talks to leading philosophers from around the world on topics related to practical ethics. The podcast and videos are intended for a non-specialist audience.
Katrien is a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.
You can watch the videos on the Practical Ethics YouTube Channel or listen on Oxford Podcasts.