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1. “Should the Grandparents Die?”: Allocation of Medical Resources with an Aging Population

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Margaret A. Somerville
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Extract

The question in my title—a deliberate inversion of Kuhse and Singer's now-famous question, “Should the baby live?”—is one that is being asked more and more frequently. As Gerald Gruman has observed:

It is questionable if today the young comatose patient is the prototype for the discussion of issues of death and dying. A more probable crucial issue is that of the elderly: a reservoir of relatively defenseless persons, perceived, through bigoted “ageism,” as unproductive and pejoratively dependent. In them, modernization has created a population stratum that, in a state of nature or conditions of scarcity economics, “ought” to be dead.

The medical care needs of aged persons, and how we, as individuals and societies, will fulfill these needs in an era of a perceived scarcity of medical resources, are a frequent topic of discussion today. The “scarcity” of medical resources is frequently a given in discussions of allocation priorities.

Type
Part III: The Health Care System
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 14 , Issue 3-4 , September 1986 , pp. 158 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1986

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References

Kuhse, H. Singer, P., Should the Baby Live? (Oxford University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Gruman, G.J., Death and Dying: Euthanasia and Sustaining Life, in Encyclopedia of Bioethics (New York: Free Press, 1978), 1: 267.Google Scholar
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R.S.Q. c. S-5, sec. 4.Google Scholar
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See C. Fried, Medical Experimentation, Personal Integrity and Social Policy (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co., 1974) at 107 et seq.Google Scholar
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For an excellent discussion of this topic, see Katz, J., The Silent World of Doctor and Patient (New York: Free Press, 1984).Google Scholar