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Prof Arthur Caplan: age a “valid criterion” to use when making the “terrible choice”

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Older people should be denied treatment for the coronavirus if a younger, healthy person needs help, according to Prof Arthur Caplan, a prominent US medical ethicist. Age, he said, was a “valid criterion” to use when making the “terrible choice” of who should receive scarce resources during the pandemic.
“To the extent to which data supports the risk of failure or the odds of success, age can justifiably be used to ration care if maximisation of lives saved is the overarching goal,” said Caplan – who is ethics adviser to the US government – in remarks in a debate published on Wednesday in the British Medical Journal. Continue reading...