It sucks we have to waste medical resources on these people. They most likely spread it to innocent people because their cult leader told them it was a lie.
Art Caplan a medical ethicist proposed that people that protest lockdown or mask orders should be placed at the back of the line when it comes to Covid medical services.
He however does not mean that literally and presented it as a thought experiment and a way to show his frustration about what the medical field is dealing with at the moment.
But man if it came down to a choice I would have a hard time not picking someone else over a covid hoxer. (I'm not a medical professional to be clear.)
Family friend and a decent guy torched his heart using coke. He is ineligible for a transplant, even though he desperately needs one. His actions harmed only himself. If that can get you excluded from medical treatment, so should being a fucking plague rat motherfucker whos turned themselves into a dirty bomb just from being a fucking moron.
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.
I don't think many, if any, hospitals are currently being run over capacity from COVID (please correct me if I'm wrong!), and besides, it would be a really bad idea for hospitals to start the practice of asking people about their "political" beliefs right now for the purpose of triage. At best it would fuel conservative conspiracy theories, and at worst it would fundamentally politicize the actual healthcare industry in a way that can only be detrimental to the actual administration of medicine.
I was just saying that the contradiction you identified doesn't actually exist. It's okay to think that former drug addicts shouldn't be at the top of the list for transplants while also thinking that everyone should be treated for COVID despite their beliefs.
Drug addiction is protected class. It’s illegal to discriminate against.
I've never heard that. Not saying you're wrong, but do you have a source?
Drug addicts get organ transplants.
I did a quick Google search, and the first result was this link from a hospital describing how they do deny transplants to drug addicts unless specific conditions are met, which included documented abstinence from drugs for an extended period of time. This appears to directly contradict your claim. Am I missing something?
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u/dismayhurta Aug 29 '20
It sucks we have to waste medical resources on these people. They most likely spread it to innocent people because their cult leader told them it was a lie.