The test of a people is how it behaves toward the old.
As the outbreak of coronavirus spread this past spring, the world of biomedical ethics exploded with journal articles, consensus statements, and blog posts arguing over the proper criteria for rationing ventilators and other scarce medical resources. The flashpoint came from some of the earliest pandemic guidelines, which appeared to promote discrimination against the elderly — the most likely to die from the disease.
In a widely cited statement, published online in the
New England Journal of Medicinein late March, bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues argued for a strategy for allocating medical resources that would maximize benefits by both “saving more lives and more years of life.” In practice, rationing on the basis of life-years strongly favors young people, who have more years left to live than the elderly and people with disabilities. Given “limited time and information” in an emergency situation, the authors suggested, saving the greatest number of patients who have “a reasonable life expectancy” is more important than improving length of life for those who do not. The overall effect of this strategy would be “giving priority” to those “at risk of dying young and not having a full life.”