Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 19:38:26 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Medical Ethics


Leo wrote:
>Yoshie asks why implicit moral guidelines in protocols for determining
>priorities of organ trasnplants should be made explicit. The answer is simple:
>for the same reason why any implicit criteria should be made explicit. This is
>the only way those criteria can be rigorously examined, changed where
>necessary and applied. What are the moral values which underlie a decision to
>give an organ first to the patient most ill, or the patient most likely to
>have the transplant work, or the patient with the longest life ahead of them,
>or any one of a number of other considerations, many of which might and
>sometimes do conflict with each other. Until you examine these criteria with
>some rigor and care, which must be done given the stakes, you are just
>shooting in the dark.

A good point. Once made explicit and rigorously examined, every seemingly
eternal moral will melt in thin air in the light of marxist reason.

Yoshie




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