From: Carrol Cox <cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Medical Ethics and Liver Transplants
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 12:26:36 -0600 (CST)


When I saw this headline on a Times article just as I was leaving New 
York I said, oh oh, there will be a post on m-thaxis when I get back.

I don't want this time around to degenerate, so I'll try to be both brief
and cautious.

I still don't like turning this into a formal "decision-making" process,
because I do not like moral decisions over who lives and who dies; because
of that I would still, either in a socialist *or* the present capitalist
world, prefer that such decisions happen by accident, messily, without a
crossing of t's and a dotting of i's and a figuring out of the morality or
justice of it.

My interest in "law" is very moderate, but I think I remember seeing
someplace the principle that hard cases make bad law. To put it in another
way, some things perhaps are best simply brushed under the rug. Working
them out in a "principled" fashion (a) won't in fact make them any better
and (b) will corrupt principle, hence the decision making process.

Carrol



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