Trolley problem Pt. 2: A cancer hospital, limited funds, patients of various ages and conditions. Should there be a universal answer?
I’d assume we want everyone to survive and carry on with their lives equally. Yet, if we can’t, there’s a choice of distributing our doctors’ time and equipments towards some of patients rather than others.
Policies deciding that choice in general, if implemented, naturally smell like death. That’d organically lead to some marks for a cut-off, the obvious one is the age - like excluding 70+ patients from active treatment and supporting them as they are instead, while prefering younger folks, because they have more projected lifespan ahead of them (AND MORE VALUE TO THE REGIIIIME!). Then, there is a game of chances for recovery. Then there are biases against lung, stomack or skin cancer patients who neglected their bodies themselves etc etc etc. And we don’t even touch the problem of these policies being sexist, racist or otherwise based on unscientific grounds.
But if not over-generalized policies that can mark some categories as not-worthy patients, we’d then assume the power to decide is in the hands of individual doctors who do have the problems in the last paragraph, but with individual power to decide as well as individual responsibility for that (but they can ask patients themselves if they want it?).
My question is: should we even seek a universal answer to that dillema? What is the beacon to navigate us here, balancing general policies and individual responsibilities? How’d we personally judge a party who’d make such decision (+ if we are their patient and we don’t want to die)?
I’ve tried my best not to suggest any answer and not to instigate any sort of an infight, but if it’s not ok, please delete it.