Listen Now: Ethical Considerations on Allocating Scarce Resources During a Pandemic
In the latest ASCO in Action Podcast, American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) CEO Dr. Clifford A. Hudis is joined by Dr. Jonathan Marron, incoming Chair of ASCO’s Ethics Committee and a lead author of the new Ethics and Resource Scarcity: ASCO Recommendations for the Oncology Community During the COVID-19 Pandemic. In this episode they discuss ASCO’s recommendations, why ASCO developed this guidance, and what patients, families, and the entire medical community need to know about allocating limited resources during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Subscribe to the ASCO in Action podcast through iTunes and Google Play. Transcript Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Dr. Clifford Hudis: Welcome to this ASCO in Action podcast, brought to you by the ASCO Podcast Network, a collection of nine programs covering a range of educational and scientific content that offers enriching insights into the world of cancer care. You can find all of our shows, including this one, at podcast.asco.org. The ASCO in Action podcast is ASCO's podcast series, where we explore the policy and practice issues that impact oncologists, the entire cancer care delivery team, and the individuals we care for, people with cancer. My name is Dr. Clifford Hudis, and I'm the CEO of ASCO. And I'm proud to serve as the host of the ASCO in Action podcast series. Today, I'm very pleased to be joined by Dr. Jonathan Marron, incoming chair of ASCO's Ethics Committee and a lead author of ASCO's recent recommendations for the oncology community on ethically managing scarce resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Marron is also a bioethicist at Boston Children's Hospital, a pediatric oncologist at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and he is on the Center for Bioethics teaching faculty at Harvard Medical School. Today, we're going to talk about those recommendations. And I'll note that they were published just recently as a special article just in early April in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. We'll focus specifically on the reasons that ASCO took this step and what it is that oncologists, patients, families, and the entire cancer care community need to know about this issue. Dr. Marron, thank you so much for joining me today. Dr. Jonathan Marron: Thank you so much, Dr. Hudis. It's really a pleasure to be speaking with you, and an honor as well. Before we get started, I do want to just point out that I have no conflicts of interest to disclose. Dr. Clifford Hudis: Well, that's great. Now, just to provide some context as we start this discussion, it's the middle of May as we're recording this. In the United States, the COVID-19 public health crisis bubbled up to awareness a little bit in January, became seemingly near threat in February, and seemed in the public's eye, I think, to breach our shores at the beginning to middle of March. So, we're about four months, more or less, into this public health crisis. The US has had now about a million and a half-confirmed cases of the virus. And I think this week, we crossed the 90,000 number in terms of deaths from the virus. From the very early days, there was-- and we all remember this-- an extraordinarily emotional and widespread concern that medical resources, and especially ventilators, but also medications, as well as space, critical and intensive care beds-- those three things, that they would be stretched, that some communities would be especially hard hit, and that, as a consequence, access to those resources might be limited. And when that arose as a concern, what followed, especially for people who work in this f
