Health lottery

Interesting problem. Resources are scarce, so who gets to die?

There are various ways to allocate scarce medical resources. The New York group developed a system for rationing ventilators based on the numbers of organs that were failing, and patients’ risk of dying. The idea behind it is the utilitarian principle that we should maximise the numbers of lives saved. Others favour including the age of the patient, their previous functional status, and coexisting illnesses, in order to maximise the number of quality-adjusted life years saved.

But these methods of rationing are vulnerable to an objection on the basis of fairness. Certain patients (for example the elderly or those with more severe illness) will be given no chance of having their life saved. The 80 year old with influenza has just as strong a desire that their life be saved as a 20 year old. Their right to life is equal to that of the 20 year old. But they are denied life-saving treatment in such a rationing system. More...