While science plays a vital role in informing decisions such as prioritisation for vaccination, these decisions are not made in a vacuum. They impact on all our lives and require assessment of legal, socio-economic factors, and judgements about what is right and wrong and what kind of society we want to live in. Siobhán explains how bioethics provides a framework that helps guide this decision making and Dick asks for her thoughts on complicated questions like should vaccination ever be mandatory, are vaccine passports fair, and are rich countries doing enough to ensure people in poorer countries have access to vaccines.
About the series
In this podcast series, science journalist Dick Ahlstrom chats with experts in public health, immunology, virology, bioethics, statistics and behavioural science. He will ask them questions sent in by you and help make sense of the answers.
This series is organised by the Life and Medical Sciences Committee in partnership with the Health Research Board
