Skeptical Worries for ICU Rationing
From the article:
1. COMPARATIVE BENEFIT/HARM PRINCIPLES IN ICU RATIONING
In what follows I will raise some skeptical concerns for ICU rationing. My basic claim is that deeply entrenched features of ICUs and ICU care make it difficult to ascertain the ethically right rationing decision in a significant number of cases. I will begin from what I hope is a non-controversial assumption, which is that ICU rationing decisions often require us to make comparative judgments about the benefits that receiving ICU resources, or the harm of foregoing them, are likely to bestow on different patients.
Substantive rationing principles often assume that we have the ability to compare harms and benefits in this way. [...]