The serious health crisis caused by the SARS-Cov-2 virus that afflicts all countries has generated enormous questions about ethical behavior in the health field, but also in the social and economic fields. In addition to generating uncertainty, the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted our lifestyles and forced us to rethink our certainties and securities.

We will almost certainly not be the same after this crisis, and neither will the way we practice medicine. In the face of this crisis, bioethics has played a crucial role and will continue to do so in future months, not only to guide medical actions, but also to help weigh up the values at stake in daily decision-making.

In this issue, we address various bioethical issues and dilemmas that have arisen from some complex scenarios we are going through. Firstly, Érika Benítez raises the acute and urgent problem of the effects on mental health that this pandemic has left in its wake, and which may even involve suicidal behavior, not only among the general population as a result of the feelings of sadness, loneliness and anguish of these past months, but also among health professionals themselves, who have been overwhelmed in their task of curing and alleviating the suffering of infected patients. It is urgent, therefore, to address this problem from the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity raised in bioethics.

For his part, John Camilo García reflects on the idea of the normalization of the health crisis as an exercise in bio power, which considers fear not as a paralyzing effect, but as a trigger for a series of actions of care and self-care which allow for resistance to this exercise of power that seeks to homogenize and normalize everything in order to control people’s lives.

The article by Rodrigo Pavón, Alfredo Covarrubias et al., addresses one of the most painful aspects of medical care in Covid’s time. It is the loneliness in which infected patients die, and proposes, under the scheme of palliative care and the principles of bioethics, a protocol so that patients who are close to death can receive visits from their families and thus ensure a farewell that will allow the subsequent mourning process to be developed.

José Enrique Gómez, in his article on the philosophical reflections on Covid-19 in the area of gerontology, takes up again the notions of quality of life and adaptability to attend to this population group, which is one of the most vulnerable during this pandemic. From the reflection on these categories and in the light of the method of general bioethics, it concludes that the principles of solidarity and sociability are the axes that should prevail when caring for the elderly.

Elvira Llaca and Luz Adriana Templos, in their article on the fundamental role of palliative care and bioethics during the Covid19 pandemic in Mexico, point to one of the most current issues that have raised great expectations in this pandemic, and that is palliative care. They propose the unavoidable incorporation of palliative care into the medical treatments offered, especially for those patients who can be expected to have little chance of survival. Palliative care, together with the principles of bioethics, helps to alleviate the serious symptoms of patients confirmed as positive, while helping and supporting the family to make ethical decisions at the end of life.

Yael Zonenzsain’s article, on the other hand, presents an extremely important topic, and that is the one dealing with the bioethical considerations in the search for a vaccine against Covid-19. After analyzing the principle of proportionality under the risk-benefit criterion, she defends the need to act ethically in all the phases of experimentation, without altering the established processes and duration, and without annulling the informed consent that guarantees the autonomy of the patients, and the principle of justice, so that it promotes an equitable distribution of the vaccine.

Finally, Jorge Alberto Álvarez Díaz presents the relevance of the practice of telemedicine, which has been evident in times of confinement, but which presents serious ethical and bioethical considerations that cannot go unnoticed. Thus, he presents the scope and limitations of this practice in order to safeguard the bioethical principles inherent to the doctor-patient relationship and the responsibility to seek always the greatest possible good.

The review, carried out by Jaime Enrique Encinas, presents the book Wuhan’s Soup as a work compiled by diverse authors, philosophers and sociologists, who propose different analyses around the causes of the pandemic, and that they let glimpse possible veins of investigation on the relations between neo-capitalism and conspiracy theories.