#9 Marc Lipsitch: How to Ethically Prevent the Next Pandemic

Bio(un)ethical

In this episode, we speak with Marc Lipsitch, epidemiologist and professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, about what lessons we should take from the COVID-19 pandemic, what role research should play in mitigating and preventing future pandemics, and how we should regulate research on potential pandemic pathogens.

(00:00) Our introduction
(11:26) Interview begins
(12:35) The role of surveillance in preventing pandemics
(23:05) What policymakers got wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic and why
(26:23) Could we have prevented backlash to COVID-19 mitigation policies?
(30:34) How to communicate uncertainty to the public during a pandemic
(35:32) What role human challenge trials should play in reducing harm
(40:02) How should we mitigate research risks to non-participants?
(48:02) How socially valuable is research on potential pandemic pathogens?
(53:21) The role of research funders and other non-regulatory bodies
(59:34) The role of bioethicists
Relevant readings:

• The Covid Crisis Group, Lessons From the Covid War: An Investigative Report
• The Guardian, “Factory Farms of Disease: How Industrial Chicken Production is Breeding the Next Pandemic”
• Our World in Data, Excess mortality during the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19)
• Wikipedia, Black Death
• The Guardian, Factory farms of disease: how industrial chicken production is breeding the next pandemic
• World Health Organization, Human infection with avian influenza A (H5N8) - Russian Federation
• CDC, Ferrets
• Friedrich Frischknech, The history of biological warfare
• Kevin Esvelt, Mitigating catastrophic biorisks
• USA Today, Lab-created bird flu virus accident shows lax oversight of risky 'gain of function' research
• Wikipedia, 1978 smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom

Bio(un)ethical is a bioethics podcast written and edited by Leah Pierson and Sophie Gibert, with production support by Audiolift.co. Our music is written by Nina Khoury and performed by Social Skills. We are supported by a grant from Amplify Creative Grants.