Some philosophers and segments of the public think age is relevant to healthcare priority-setting. One argument for this is based in equity: “Old” patients have had either more of a relevant good than “young” patients or enough of that good and so have weaker claims to treatment. This article first notes that some discussions of age-based priority that focus in this way on old and young patients exhibit an ambiguity between two claims: that patients classified as old should have a (...) low priority, and that patients classified as young should have high priority. The author next argues, drawing on a problem raised by Christine Overall, that equity cannot justify giving “old” patients low priority, since there is wide variety in the total lifetime experiences of older people, partly influenced by gender, race, class, and disability injustice. Finally, the author suggests that there might be a limited role for age-based prioritization in the context of infant and childhood death, since those who die in childhood are always and uncontroversially among the worst-off. (shrink)

The coronavirus pandemic has brought to public attention a variety of questions long debated in medical ethics, but now given both added urgency and wider publicity. Among these is triage, with its origins in deciding which individual lives are to be saved on a battlefield, but now also concerned with the allocation of scarce resources more generally. On the historical battlefield, decisions about whom to treat first – neither those who would survive without treatment, nor those who would not survive (...) even with treatment, but those who needed treatment to survive – was facilitated by military discipline and the limited effectiveness of treatments available. In the allocation of scarce resources today, by contrast, such decisions are subject to intense public and political scrutiny, and the range of effective treatments available has immeasurably diminished the proportion of ‘those who would not survive even with treatment’. If triage decisions are to be made, they now need to be justified in the arena of public opinion by moral arguments which are also politically persuasive. A number of different aspects of what is required for this endeavour are examined in the first five contributions to this issue of the Journal. In ‘Should age matter in COVID-19 triage? A deliberative study ’1, Kuylen and colleagues report on a deliberative study of public views in the UK, in which participants ‘generally accepted the need for triage but strongly rejected ’fair innings’ and ’life projects’ principles as justifications for age-based allocation,…preferring to maximise the number of lives rather than life years saved’; and concerned that in any resolution ‘utilitarian considerations of efficiency should be tempered with a concern for equality and vulnerability’. A similar concern to temper utilitarian considerations, in this case with an Aristotelian view of the common good as ‘the good life for …. (shrink)

Background The prioritization protocols for accessing adult critical care in the extreme pandemic context contain tiebreaker criteria to facilitate decision-making in the allocation of resources between patients with a similar survival prognosis. Besides being controversial, little is known about the public acceptability of these tiebreakers. In order to better understand the public opinion, Quebec and Ontario’s protocols were presented to the public in a democratic deliberation during the summer of 2022. Objectives (1) To explore the perspectives of Quebec and Ontario (...) citizens regarding tiebreakers, identifying the most acceptable ones and their underlying values. (2) To analyze these results considering other public consultations held during the pandemic on these criteria. Methods This was an exploratory qualitative study. The design involved an online democratic deliberation that took place over two days, simultaneously in Quebec and Ontario. Public participants were selected from a community sample which excluded healthcare workers. Participants were first presented the essential components of prioritization protocols and their related issues (training session day 1). They subsequently deliberated on the acceptability of these criteria (deliberation session day 2). The deliberation was then subject to thematic analysis. Results A total of 47 participants from the provinces of Quebec (n = 20) and Ontario (n = 27) took part in the online deliberation. A diverse audience participated excluding members of the healthcare workforce. Four themes were identified: (1) Priority to young patients - the life cycle - a preferred tiebreaker; (2) Randomization - a tiebreaker of last resort; (3) Multiplier effect of most exposed healthcare workers - a median acceptability tiebreaker, and (4) Social value – a less acceptable tiebreaker. Conclusion Life cycle was the preferred tiebreaker as this criterion respects intergenerational equity, which was considered relevant when allocating scarce resources to adult patients in a context of extreme pandemic. Priority to young patients is in line with other consultations conducted around the world. Additional studies are needed to further investigate the public acceptability of tiebreaker criteria. (shrink)