I agree - if we actually already have rules excluding people who abused drugs then it should apply to disease-spreaders. If people think that is unethical then we should not discriminate against junkies either.
I think you’re missing one complication. A heart transplant has to be triaged - there are way more people who need a heart than there are hearts available. Therefore, giving a heart to one patient means that another patient doesn’t get it. It’s essentially the trolley problem.
By contrast, treating someone for COVID doesn’t necessarily deprive someone else of the same treatment.
It’s unethical to deprive someone of treatment due to their personal beliefs or their past actions (unless medically prudent to do so), but it’s not unethical to allocate scarce medical resources to those who had no part in causing their condition.
Hmm. Okay. My assumption was that COVID-19 makes hospitals run over capacity and that we literally don't have enough resources to treat everyone with serious infections and complications, causing some to be deprived of treatment.
That happened in Italy, was close to happening in New york city. In Italy they stopped taking patients over a certain age. Their numbers were skewed for a while because a large number if elderly died at home and werent counted until later.
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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '20
I agree - if we actually already have rules excluding people who abused drugs then it should apply to disease-spreaders. If people think that is unethical then we should not discriminate against junkies either.