Unresolved ethical and practical dilemmas about allocating ventilators and critical care resources could threaten the success of the response to a public health emergency.

We contend that the previously proposed “save the most lives” allocation strategy is insufficient because it fails to incorporate morally relevant considerations such as the expected years of life saved and the importance of giving individuals equal opportunity to pass through life’s stages.

We propose an alternative, multi-principle allocation strategy that better reflects the moral complexity of the issue and that applies the same allocation criteria to all patients.

We hope that our proposal will stimulate a broad debate about how to ethically allocate scarce life-sustaining resources during a public health emergency.

Read More