With services overburdened, healthcare professionals have to decide who should receive treatment. Is it wrong to prioritise younger patients with COVID-19?
Writing in the BMJ this week, Dave Archard, Emeritus Professor at Queen's University in Belfast, says age should not be used to decide who does and does not receive potentially life-saving treatment.
A simple “younger than” criterion is clearly unsatisfactory, he says, as it would prioritise an 18-year-old over a 19-year-old on the grounds of one year’s difference in age.
This would not be much better morally than tossing a coin or a crude “first come, first served” principle, he writes.
There is also the fair innings argument, which affords everyone an opportunity to a life of a certain duration. Those who have yet to live that length of life are prioritised over those who have already done so, but “someone who has had her fair innings may yet have much to give the world that another who has not may be unable to offer,” he says.
But Arthur Caplan, Professor of Bioethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York, argues that age is a valid criterion when supported by data.
He points out that age has played a role for many decades in limiting access to care when rationing life-saving treatments, such as renal dialysis and organ transplants.
If the goal is to save the most lives with scarce resources then age may matter if there is a diminishing chance of survival with increased age, he adds.
“Ageism has no place in rationing, but age may,” he said.
