UNESCO Chair in Bioethics

Contact

  • Bioethics and Law Observatory
  • UNESCO Chair in Bioethics
  • University of Barcelona
  • Faculty of Law
  • Ave. Diagonal, 684
  • 08034 Barcelona
  • (+34) 93 403 45 46
  • obd.ub@ub.edu
  •  
  • Master in Bioethics and Law
  • (+34) 93 403 45 46
  • master.bd@ub.edu

 

"Fear and the Front Line"

The New England Journal of Medicine

I have been thinking a lot about fear  lately,  and  how  much  it  behaves  like  a  virus.  How  it  can  spread insidiously, person to per-son,  or  airborne,  through  new  media  and  old,  faster  than  we  can  contain  it.  How  it  induces  so  many  of  the  same  symptoms  as a virus does: sweating, palpita-tion, nausea, shivering, and some-times  an  almost  overwhelming  desire to curl up under a blanket in  a  dark  room  and  stay  there.  How  once  fear  has  infected  you,  it  is  hard  to  get  rid  of,  but  ex-tremely easy to pass on to others.