Sorry but you're incorrect. Your assumption of the complication being death is exaggerated, the surgery in question here is not that serious. Even if it were de

Sorry but you're incorrect. Your assumption of the complication being death is exaggerated, the surgery in question here is not that serious. Even if it were death someone would have to model the adverse effects of the increased waiting list. People waiting might result in an increase in mortality surpassing the doubled risk from surgeon error. How do you quantify which surgeons are better? I'm not an expert but surely this study's methodology is not without it's own assumptions. Things like complication rate vary wildly with patient population and other factors. This isn't a telemarketing job where you quantify easily. Similarly how can you quantify who the best programmer is? What is the economic cost of quantifying who the best surgeon is? How expensive is it to apply this study to every surgery? We must ensure that the rankings system is valid before applying it to prevent perverse incentives such as only taking low risk cases. You don't want a USNews Week type system like you have for universities which has obvious flaws and biases. You say waiting lists are dumb, but why? Are you 'killing people' by letting an inferior surgeon operate? Why is 'don't kill people' easy to understand and enforce? By not killing one to save ten are you not killing ten people? You're seeing this as black and white. This is not the case. Whether it is better to save one or ten I am not the person to judge, but you are oversimplifying this drastically. The ethical question here is NOT sentencing someone to death like killing someone to harvest organs. It's more similar to doing nothing to save someone most likely to die in order to save ten, like how they do military triage. Life is 'abstract and fuzzy'. This isn't an engineering challenge, as you say there are several things to consider. Stalin ignored the human aspect, is this right or wrong? How can you blindly answer this without supporting your conclusion. What seems humane isn't always the right answer to things. By your same argument are layoffs ever justified despite it being for the common good for the company and the remaining employees?