Contagion (2011) REVIEW
Contagion is a Bioethics class candystore. It takes the plotline of a highly infectious global epidemic and drills down into it to uncover the wide spectrum of ethical responses that human beings are capable of. Here are just some of the questions that various characters are faced with.
- If a medical examination can demonstrate conclusively that a spouse has been having an affair, should the naïve victim be told?
- If a person stands to profit by disseminating false information about a medical emergency, what ethical theory should stop him?
- If a group of investors stands to gain by capitalizing on a medical emergency that they did not create, is there anything wrong with taking advantage of the situation?
- What liberties may be taken from people to protect the lives of other people?
- What measures might one legitimately take to defend and provide for themselves and their families in a crisis that threatens to favor the aggressive?
- Would an epidemic change the basic fundamental rules of ethics that a society lives by? Would nurses, doctors, firemen, and police have an obligation to put themselves in greater danger of infection in the advent of a global medical threat?
- Would a researcher told that a virus was too dangerous for him to work with be wrong to keep pursuing a cure?
- Would people with knowledge of an impending quarantine have legitimate right to inform spouses to leave the area before the quarantine was put into effect?
- Would it be ethical to put them on trial for doing so?
- If the spouse who was told to leave was also told to say nothing to anyone else, would they be right not to pass the word on to a friend?
- Would a Chinese village decimated by the plague have any justification in taking a hostage in order to get themselves placed at the top of the vaccine list in order to save the surviving children?
- Would a researcher who believed that they had found a vaccine have a right to it before others got it?
- Would they be wrong to violate standard procedures in order to test the vaccine on themselves?
- Would it be wrong to cut in line to get a possible cure if there were a limited supply?
- Should people with political power be given special treatments and scarce resources?
- When would it be ethical or unethical to give away one’s own vaccine to save another person?
Contagion explores the psychology and ethics of panic and mass hysteria in a variety of environments and considers how people might act differently, either for good or bad in such a life-threatening situation. Among the scenes of legitimate self-protective behavior the film is sprinkled with acts of crass selfishness and saintly altruism. A dying man tries to give his coat away to another nearby victim. A scientist risks his own life to find a cure. Another scientists goes back to a village to tell people that they have been given placebo vaccines even though she was taken hostage by them. Millions of people collaborate to pay the bail of a man arrested for intentionally publishing false information for his own personal gain. Throughout the film, the Rubics Cube of ethical possibilities in the livespans of unlimited combinations of character qualities manifest themselves, allowing for an endless variety of potential class discussions. I think this film should spread rapidly. Deeper thinking would be one of the first symptoms.
Question for Comment: If you picture the outbreak of a deadly disease in your community, do you think people would behave nobly or would instincts of self-interest manifest themselves in surprising ways? What characteristics of your community would allow you to predict?
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