Opinion: Public Health Trumps Privacy in a Pandemic

If governments were to use SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests to manage who can re-enter the workplace, society must accept a sacrifice of privacy.

Written byJohn D. Loike and Ruth L. Fischbach

| 4 min read

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antibody test coronavirus covid-19 sars-cov-2 immunity privacy confidentiality ethics bioethics public safety health

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We propose an “ethical precautionary principle” in response to how governments should restart the economy from this pandemic. We define an ethical precautionary principle as a strategy used when approaching potential ethical harm under conditions where extensive scientific knowledge and data are lacking. In this situation, we propose an antibody certification process to identify those individuals who could safely return to work even though this process may violate ethical rights of privacy and confidentiality. Those with low or no titers of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, will not be allowed to return to work until there is herd immunity or they are vaccinated.

Presumably, there will be extensive diagnostic testing of our population to establish who has sufficient protective antibody titers against SARS-CoV-2. In the short term, an in vitro test that measures neutralizing anti–SARS-CoV-2 antibodies may be sufficient to estimate what ...

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Meet the Author

John D. Loike
John Loike serves as the interim director of bioethics at New York Medical College and as a professor of biology at Touro University. He served previously as the codirector for graduate studies in the Department of Physiology Cellular Biophysics and director of Special Programs in the Center for Bioethics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His biomedical research focuses on how human white blood cells combat infections and cancer. Loike lectures internationally on emerging topics in bioethics, organizes international conferences, and has published more than 150 papers and abstracts in the areas of immunology, cancer, and bioethics. He earned his Ph.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.
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Ruth L. Fischbach
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