It's not just prospective years of life saved that have to be weighed; the subjective quality of those years must be considered. I've had conversations with a neonatologist (a doctor who...
It's not just prospective years of life saved that have to be weighed; the subjective quality of those years must be considered.
I've had conversations with a neonatologist (a doctor who specializes in newborn care) who also researched in medical ethics. Given that his profession had reached a point where newborns at less than 26 weeks gestation could be kept alive, he was trying to develop a triage system for ascertaining which infants should receive heroic measures.
Severely premature infants have dire medical problems - underdeveloped lungs that can't transpire oxygen and carbon dioxide effectively, incomplete hearts, excessively fragile blood vessels in the cranium, and so forth. Even if these infants survive, most have lifelong health problems, and never achieve normal neurological maturity.
By the measures listed in the article, saving a severely premature infant might supersede saving any other person as they have the greatest life-year potential. Yet keeping them alive can become a deeply unethical act of involuntary human experimentation with a high probability of lifelong suffering.
Title changed to make it clear this is not related to Black Lives Matter or anything of that sort.
When thinking about triage situations, it's common for people to assume that saving lives (as many of them as possible) should be our moral goal. But this is wrong, for the straightforward reason that some deaths are vastly more tragic than others.
Title changed to make it clear this is not related to Black Lives Matter or anything of that sort.
It's not just prospective years of life saved that have to be weighed; the subjective quality of those years must be considered.
I've had conversations with a neonatologist (a doctor who specializes in newborn care) who also researched in medical ethics. Given that his profession had reached a point where newborns at less than 26 weeks gestation could be kept alive, he was trying to develop a triage system for ascertaining which infants should receive heroic measures.
Severely premature infants have dire medical problems - underdeveloped lungs that can't transpire oxygen and carbon dioxide effectively, incomplete hearts, excessively fragile blood vessels in the cranium, and so forth. Even if these infants survive, most have lifelong health problems, and never achieve normal neurological maturity.
By the measures listed in the article, saving a severely premature infant might supersede saving any other person as they have the greatest life-year potential. Yet keeping them alive can become a deeply unethical act of involuntary human experimentation with a high probability of lifelong suffering.
Title changed to make it clear this is not related to Black Lives Matter or anything of that sort.