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I don’t understand who gets to decide and how, which of these people receive / don’t receive a specific treatment. I’ve always loved medical studies, but now t

I don’t understand who gets to decide and how, which of these people receive / don’t receive a specific treatment. I’ve always loved medical studies, but now the crisis got me to thinking about the moral decision (playing god?)

CydeWeys 7y ago
The answer is, by and large, doctors. Within the hospitals they really do have the power of life and death, deciding who gets treatment when supplies are thin. Generally the decisions are made using the heuristic of "With this limited stock of X, who should we give it to to save the maximum possible number and quality of lives?" It's not playing god, it's just making rational decisions in times of scarcity. That's something humans do constantly, no god necessary.
DanBC 7y ago
You might be interested in this letter from the BMA: https://www.bma.org.uk/media/2283/bma-ethics-guidance-and-age-and-disability-statement-april-2020.pdf https://www.bma.org.uk/media/2283/bma-ethics-guidance-and-ag... > This note addresses in more detail the relationship between our guidance and those patients who are elderly or who have disabilities. It emphasises that neither age nor disability are in themselves relevant criteria for making decisions about treatment. This follows on from widespread (and perhaps misleading) reporting about a tool. This tool has NHS branding, but it doesn't appear to have come from NHS_England+Improvement. http://prod-upp-image-read.ft.com/765d3430-7a57-11ea-af44-daa3def9ae03 http://prod-upp-image-read.ft.com/765d3430-7a57-11ea-af44-da...