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In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, billionaire and Trump megadonor Elon Musk offered his thoughts about what motivates political progressives to support immigration. In his view, the culprit was empathy, which he called the fundamental weakness of Western civilization. As shocking as Musks views are, however, they are far from unique. On the one hand, there is the familiar and widespread conservative critique of bleeding heart liberals as naive or overly emotional. But there is also a broader philosophical critique that raises worries about empathy on quite different and less political grounds, including findings in social science. Empathy can make people weaker both physically and practically, according to social scientists. Consider the phenomenon known as empathy fatigue, a major source of burnout among counselors, nurses and even neurosurgeons. These professionals devote their lives to helping others, yet the empathy they feel for their clients and patients wears them down, making it harder to do their jobs. As philosophers, we agree that empathy can take a toll on both individuals and society. However, we believe that, at its core, empathy is a form of mental strength that enables us to better understand the impact of our actions on others, and to make informed choices. The philosophical roots of empathy skepticism The term empathy only entered the English language in the 1890s. But the general idea of being moved by others suffering has been a subject of philosophical attention for millennia, under labels such as pity, sympathy and compassion. One of the earliest warnings about pity in Western philosophy comes from the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus. In his Discourses, he offers general advice about how to live a good life, centered on inner tranquility and freedom. When it comes to emotions and feelings, he writes: He is free who lives as he wishes to live And who chooses to live in sorrow, fear, envy, pity, desiring and failing in his desires, attempting to avoid something and falling into it? Not one. Feeling sorry for another person or feeling pity for them compromises our freedom, in Epictetuss view. Those negative feelings are unpleasant, and nobody would choose them for themselves. Empathy would clearly fall into this same category, keeping us from living the good life. A similar objection emerged much later from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche framed his discussion in terms of Mitleid a German term that can be translated as either pity or compassion. Like Epictetus, Nietzsche worried that pity or compassion was a burden on the individual, preventing them from living the good life. In his book Daybreak, Nietzsche warns that such feelings could impair the very people who try to help others. Epictetuss and Nietzsches worries about pity or compassion carry over to empathy. Recall, the phenomenon of empathy fatigue. One psychological explanation for why empathic people experience fatigue and even burnout is that empathy involves a kind of mirroring of other peoples mental life, a mirroring that can be physically unpleasant. When someone you love is in pain, you dont just believe that they are in pain; you may feel it as if it is actually happening to you. Results from neuroscience and cognitive psychology research indicate that there are different brain mechanisms involved in merely observing anothers pain versus empathizing with it. The latter involves unpleasant sensations of the type we experience when we are in pain. Empathy is thus difficult to bear precisely because being in pain is difficult to bear. And this sharpens the Stoic and Nietzschean worries: Why bother empathizing when it is unpleasant and, perhaps, not even necessary for helping others? From understanding knowledge to appreciating empathy The answer for why one should see empathy as a strength starts with a key insight from 20th century philosophy about the nature of knowledge. That insight is based on a famous thought experiment by the Australian philosopher Frank Jackson. Jackson invites us to imagine a scientist named Mary who has studied colors despite having lived her entire life in a black and white room. She knows all the facts about the spectrum distribution of light sources and vision science. Shes read descriptions of the redness of roses and azaleas. But shes never seen color herself. Does Mary know everything about redness? Many epistemologists people who study the nature of knowledge argue that she does not. What Mary learns when she sees red for the first time is elusive. If she returns to her black and white room, never to see any colored objects again, her knowledge of the colors will likely diminish over time. To have a full, rich understanding of colors, one needs to experience them. Thoughts like these led the philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell to argue that experience delivers a special kind of knowledge of things that cant be reduced to knowledge of facts. Seeing, hearing, tasting and even feeling delivers what he called knowledge by acquaintance. We have argued in a book and recent articles that Jacksons and Russells conclusions apply to pain. Consider a variation on Jacksons thought experiment: Suppose Mary knows the facts about pain but hasnt experienced it. As before, it would seem like her understanding of pain is incomplete. In fact, though Mary is a fictional character, there are real people who report having never experienced pain as an unpleasant sensation a condition known as pain asymbolia. In Russells terminology, such people havent personally experienced how unpleasant pain can be. But even people without pain asymbolia can become less familiar with pain and hardship during times when things are going well for them. All of us can temporarily lose the rich experiential grasp of what it is like to be distressed. So, when we consider the pain and suffering of others in the abstract and without directly feeling it, it is very much like trying to grasp the nature of redness while being personally acquainted only with a field of black and white. That, we argue, is where empathy comes in. Through experiential simulation of anothers feelings, empathy affords us a rich grasp of the distess that others feel. The upshot is that empathy isnt just a subjective sensation. It affords us a more accurate understanding of others experiences and emotions. Empathy is thus a form of knowledge that can be hard to bear, just as pain can be hard to bear. But thats precisely why empathy, properly cultivated, is a strength. As one of us has argued, it takes courage to empathically engage with others, just as it takes courage to see and recognize problems around us. Conversely, an unwillingness to empathize can stem from a familiar weakness: a fear of knowledge. So, when deciding complex policy questions, say, about immigration, resisting empathy impairs our decision-making. It keeps us from understanding whats at stake. That is why it is vital to ask ourselves what policies we would favor if we were empathically acquainted with, and so fully informed of, the plight of others. Emad H. Atiq is a professor of law and philosophy at Cornell University. Colin Marshall is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Washington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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On March 20, members of the World Health Organization adopted the worlds first pandemic agreement, following three years of intensive negotiations launched by governments in response to the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S., however, did not participate, in part because of its intention to withdraw from the WHO. Global health experts are hailing the agreement as a historic moment. What does the agreement mean for the world, and how can it make everyone safer and more prepared for the next pandemic? The Conversation asked Nicole Hassoun, a professor at Binghamton University and executive director of Global Health Impact, to explain the pandemic accord, its prospects for advancing global health, and the significance of the U.S.s absence from it. What will the pandemic agreement do? The accord will bolster pandemic preparation within individual countries and around the world. Countries signing onto the agreement are committing to improve their disease surveillance, grow their healthcare workforces, strengthen their regulatory systems, and invest in research and development. It encourages countries to strengthen their health regulations and infrastructure, improve communication with the public about pandemics, and increase funding for preparation and response efforts. It also includes new mechanisms for producing and distributing vaccines and other essential countermeasures. Finally, it encourages countries to coordinate their responses and share information about infectious diseases and intellectual property so that vaccines and other essential countermeasures can be made available more quickly. The agreement will take effect once enough countries ratify it, which may take several years. Why isnt the U.S. involved? The Biden administration was broadly supportive of a pandemic agreement and was an active participant in negotiations. Prior to Donald Trumps reelection, however, Republican governors had signed a letter opposing the treaty, echoing a conservative think tanks concerns about U.S. sovereignty. The U.S. withdrew from negotiations when President Trump signed an executive order to withdraw from the WHO on the day he was inaugurated for his second term. Why could the lack of U.S. involvement be beneficial for the world? The lack of U.S. involvement likely resulted in a much more equitable treaty, and it is not clear that countries could have reached an agreement had the U.S. continued to object to key provisions. It was only once the U.S. withdrew from the negotiations that an agreement was reached. The U.S. and several other wealthy countries were concerned with protecting their pharmaceutical industries’ profits and resisted efforts aimed at convincing pharmaceutical companies to share the knowledge, data, and intellectual property needed for producing new vaccines and other essential countermeasures. Other negotiators sought greater access to vaccines and other treatments during a pandemic for poorer countries, which often rely on patented technologies from global pharmaceutical companies. While most people in wealthy countries had access to COVID-19 vaccines as early as 2021, many people in developing countries had to wait years for vaccines. How could the agreement broaden access for treatments? One of the contentious issues in the pandemic agreement has to do with how many vaccines manufacturers in each country must share in exchange for access to genetic sequences to emerging infectious diseases. Countries are still negotiating a system for sharing the genetic information on pathogens in return for access to vaccines themselves. It is important that researchers can get these sequences to make vaccines. And, of course, people need access to the vaccines once they are developed. Still, there are many more promising aspects of the agreement for which no further negotiations are necessary. For instance, the agreement will increase global vaccine supply by increasing manufacturing around the world. The agreement also specifies that countries and the WHO should work together to create a mechanism for fairly sharing the intellectual property, data, and knowledge needed to produce vaccines and other essential health products. If financing for new innovation requires equitable access to the new technologies that are developed, many people in poor countries may get access to vaccines much more quickly in the next pandemic. The agreement also encourages individual countries to offer sufficient incentives for pharmaceutical companies to extend access to developing countries. If countries implement these changes, that will benefit people in rich countries as well as poor ones. A more equitable distribution of vaccines can contain the spread of disease, saving millions of lives. What more should be done, and does the U.S. have a role to play? In my view, the best way to protect public health moving forward is for countries to sign on to the agreement and devote more resources to global health initiatives. This is particularly important, given declining investment and participation in the WHO and the contraction of other international health initiatives, such as USAID. Without international coordination, it will become harder to catch and address problems eary enough to prevent epidemics from becoming pandemics. It will also be imperative for member countries to provide funding to support the agreements goals and secure the innovation and access to new technologies. This requires building the basic health infrastructure to ensure shots can get into peoples arms. Nicole Hassoun is a professor of philosophy at Binghamton University, State University of New York. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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On May 20, 2025, the Food and Drug Administration announced a new stance on who should receive the COVID-19 vaccine. The agency said it would approve new versions of the vaccine only for adults 65 years of age and older as well as for people with one or more risk factors for severe COVID-19 outcomes. These risk factors include medical conditions such as asthma, cancer, chronic kidney disease, heart disease and diabetes. However, healthy younger adults and children who fall outside of these groups may not be eligible to receive the COVID-19 shot this fall. Vaccine manufacturers will have to conduct clinical trials to demonstrate that the vaccine benefits low-risk groups. FDA Commissioner Martin Makary and the agencys head of vaccines, Vinay Prasad, described the new framework in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine and in a public webcast. The Conversation U.S. asked Libby Richards, a nursing professor involved in public health promotion, to explain why the changes were made and what they mean for the general public. Why did the FDA diverge from past practice? Until the May 20 announcement, getting a yearly COVID-19 vaccine was recommended for everyone ages 6 months and older, regardless of their health risk. According to Makary and Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration is moving away from these universal recommendations and instead taking a risk-based approach based on its interpretation of public health trends specifically, the declining COVID-19 booster uptake, a lack of strong evidence that repeated boosters improve health outcomes for healthy people and the fact that natural immunity from past COVID-19 infections is widespread. The FDA states it wants to ensure the vaccine is backed by solid clinical trial data, especially for low-risk groups. Was this a controversial decision or a clear consensus? The FDAs decision to adopt a risk-based framework for the COVID-19 vaccine aligns with the expected recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an advisory group of vaccine experts offering expert guidance to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy, which is scheduled to meet in June 2025. But while this advisory committee was also expected to recommend allowing low-risk people to get annual COVID-19 vaccines if they want to, the FDAs policy will likely make that difficult. Although the FDA states that its new policy aims to promote greater transparency and evidenced-based decision-making, the change is controversial in part because it circumvents the usual process for evaluating vaccine recommendations. The FDA is enacting this policy change by limiting its approval of the vaccine to high-risk groups, and it is doing so without any new data supporting its decision. Usually, however, the FDA broadly approves a vaccine based on whether it is safe and effective, and decisions on who should be eligible to receive it are left to the CDC, which receives research-based guidance from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Additionally, FDA officials point to Canada, Australia and some European countries that limit vaccine recommendations to older adults and other high-risk people as a model for its revised framework. But vaccine strategies vary widely, and this more conservative approach has not necessarily proven superior. Also, those countries have universal health care systems and have a track record of more equitable access to COVID-19 care and better COVID-19 outcomes. Another question is how health officials positions on COVID-19 vaccines affect public perception. Makary and Prasad noted that COVID-19 vaccination campaigns may have actually eroded public trust in vaccination. But some vaccine experts have expressed concerns that limiting COVID-19 vaccine access might further fuel vaccine hesitancy because any barrier to vaccine access can reduce uptake and hinder efforts to achieve widespread immunity. What conditions count as risk factors? The New England Journal of Medicine article includes a lengthy list of conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19 and notes that about 100 million to 200 million people will fall into this category and will thus be eligible to get the vaccine. Pregnancy is included. Some items on the list, however, are unclear. For example, the list includes asthma, but the data that asthma is a risk factor for severe COVID-19 is scant. Also on the list is physical inactivity, which likely applies to a vast swath of Americans and is difficult to define. Studies have found links between regular physical activity and reduced risk of severe COVID-19 infection, but its unclear how health care providers will define and measure physical inactivity when assessing a patients eligibility for COVID-19 vaccines. Most importantly, the list leaves out an important group caregivers and household members of people at high risk of severe illness from COVID-19 infection. This omission leaves high-risk people more vulnerable to exposure to COVID-19 from healthy people they regularly interact with. Multiple countries the new framework refers to do include this group. Why is the FDA requiring new clinical trials? According to the FDA, the benefits of multiple doses of COVID-19 vaccines for healthy adults are currently unproven. Its true that studies beyond the fourth vaccine ose are scarce. However, multiple studies have demonstrated that the vaccine is effective at preventing the risk of severe COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death in low-risk adults and children. Receiving multiple doses of COVID-19 vaccines has also been shown to reduce the risk of long COVID. The FDA is requiring vaccine manufactures to conduct additional large randomized clinical trials to further evaluate the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 boosters for healthy adults and children. These trials will primarily test whether the vaccines prevent symptomatic infections, and secondarily whether they prevent hospitalization and death. Such trials are more complex, costly and time-consuming than the more common approach of testing for immunological response. This requirement will likely delay both the timeliness and the availability of COVID-19 vaccine boosters and slow public health decision-making. Will low-risk people be able to get a COVID-19 shot? Not automatically. Under the new FDA framework, healthy adults who wish to receive the fall COVID-19 vaccine will face obstacles. Health care providers can administer vaccines off-label, but insurance coverage is widely based on FDA recommendations. The new, narrower FDA approval will likely reduce both access to COVID-19 vaccines for the general public and insurance coverage for COVID-19 vaccines. The FDAs focus on individual risks and benefits may overlook broader public health benefits. Communities with higher vaccination rates have fewer opportunities to spread the virus. What about vaccines for children? High-risk children age 6 months and older who have conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19 are still eligible for the vaccine under the new framework. As of now, healthy children age 6 months and older without underlying medical conditions will not have routine access to COVID-19 vaccines until further clinical trial data is available. Existing vaccines already on the market will remain available, but it is unclear how long they will stay authorized and how the change will affect childhood vaccination overall. Libby Richards is a professor of nursing at Purdue University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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