http://ethicsalarms.com/2020/09/23/an-old-ethics-dilemma-with-no-solution/
On Distributing The Wuhan Vaccine: An Old Ethics Dilemma With No Solution
SEPTEMBER 23, 2020 / JACK MARSHALL
I was waiting for this one.
Back when ventilators were the rage (before we found out that once you were
on a ventilator, you were pretty much toast anyway–Science!), I had filed an
article about the likelihood that Down Syndrome sufferers would be deemed
unworthy of high priority when scarce equipment was being rationed. I never
got around to writing about it, but I knew, like the giant swan in
“Lohengrin,” the issue would be sailing by again. Sure enough, as the
prospect of a Wuhan virus vaccine seems within view, the same basic question
is being raised: if there aren’t enough vaccines for everyone, who gets the
first shot (pun intended)?
Well, there is no right answer to this one, unfortunately. All debates on
the topic will become that popular game show, “Pick Your Favorite Ethical
System!” or its successful spin-off, “What’s Fair Anyway?” That’s fun and
all, but the debates are completely predictable.
The issue is essentially the same as the “meteor or asteroid about to hit
the Earth” dilemma in movie like “Deep Impact,” where only a limited number
of citizens can be sheltered as a potential extinction event looms. If you
follow the Golden Rule or the John Rawls variation, you end up with
survivors being chosen by lot, or pure chance. Kantian ethics also tends to
reject any system that sacrifices one life for a “more valuable” one.
Competent and rational public policy, however, has to take into
consideration more factors than these over-simplified (and this appealing)
ethical systems can.
Like it or not, a decision in the rationing of a vital resource problem has
to come down to utilitarianism, or balancing. That means winners and losers,
and the losers in such decisions always feel that the winners being favored
is unfair. From their perspective, they are right. Policymakers, however,
have a duty to society as a whole, and the long-term best interests of the
whole population. Being human, they also have biases, and how they weigh the
various factors involved in balancing interests inevitably is affected by
their own agendas.
If the job of determining who got the vaccine first was delegated to Black
Lives Matters, how do you think it would approach the problem?
This article by the American Council on Science and Health (Full Disclosure:
I acquired funding for an ACSH study when I ran the National Chamber
Foundation) discusses the vaccine problem and proposals that so-called
“superspreaders”—young people who are not at the greatest risk of fatality
from the pandemic but are the ones most likely to spread it—should get the
vaccine before the elderly. You can make up your own mind about the logic.
My own approach to “balancing” would begin with leaving anyone 80 or above
(what my father called “the Red Zone”) last on the the priority list, since
they might drop dead any minute anyway. The real battle is bound to be over
“essential” people, whoever they are. Again, there are no right answers
(though there are wrong ones), because priorities and relative values are
not reducible to certainly. Should parents have priority over single adults?
Are teachers essential or only good teachers? Elected officials? Citizens
over illegal residents? Artists over athletes? Lawyers over truck drivers?
Clergy over sex workers?
Yes, I was waiting for this one.
That doesn’t mean I am looking forward to it.