Project description
Ethics of mortality for theoretical death measurements
Globally, approximately 60 million deaths occur each year due to diseases and injuries. While significant resources have been allocated to prevent deaths, comparatively few have been directed towards developing theoretically sound death measurements. The ERC-funded ETHME project aims to address this gap by introducing the ethics of mortality measurement as a new and emerging field within the philosophy of epidemiology. The project seeks to enhance our understanding of the harm caused by death, reconcile the assessment of deaths in summary measures of population health with the most promising accounts of the harm of death, and establish a theoretical foundation for evaluating procreation. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, ETHME aims to contribute to more robust and ethically informed approaches to mortality measurement.
Objective
There are around 55 million deaths in the world each year. How should we evaluate these deaths?
Diseases and injuries give rise to both morbidity and mortality. Until the 1950s, epidemiologists were concerned with counting the number of deaths. Since then, evaluative measures concerned with the disvalue of death have grown. In parallel, there has been a debate in analytic philosophy since the 1970s that concerns whether death can harm those who die. The philosophers in this latter debate have not focused on deaths at a population level.
In all societies, the demand for health care exceeds the available resources. However, to prioritize
scarce resources in a consistent and meaningful manner, we need reliable health measurements to begin with. In society, we use considerable resources to prevent deaths, and the majority of the global disease burden springs from mortality rather than morbidity. Thus, it is remarkable that so few resources are used to provide theoretically robust death measurements. People's attitudes toward death are naturally ambivalent. On the one hand, death is the worst thing that can happen to us. On the other hand, death is nothing to us. Sophisticated methods have been developed to measure morbidity. Such work remains for mortality.
There have been almost no cross-fertilizations between epidemiology and philosophy regarding mortality measurement. Accordingly, ETHME announces the ethics of mortality measurement as a novel and developing field within the philosophy of epidemiology. The core objectives of ETHME are to (a) develop and refine the understanding of the nature of the harm of death, (b) reconcile the evaluation of deaths in summary measures of population health with the most promising accounts of the harm of death, and (c) develop a theoretical grounding for evaluating procreation in future individuals. One work package will be devoted to each objective (WP1–WP3).
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology demography mortality
- medical and health sciences health sciences public health epidemiology
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion ethics
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion philosophy
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-STG
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0313 Oslo
Norway
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