Friday, April 03, 2015

Forthcoming in Bioethics

... is my paper, 'Against "Saving Lives": Equal Concern and Differential Impact' [pdf].

It draws on many of my previous blog posts on the ethics of allocation, especially:
* Are QALYs Discriminatory? -- The basic argument against Harris's "discrimination" objection: It isn't objectionably discriminatory to prioritize greater harms/benefits over lesser ones, and that's all that QALYs are about.
* The associated mistake of conflating the worth of and to a person.
* Where Harris' Double Jeopardy objection goes wrong.
Lives Can't be Saved -- why person-numbers saved have no intrinsic significance, over and above maximizing life-years or other general welfare measures.
* QALYs, DALYs, and Complete Lives -- Why some life-years are worth more to us than others.
* Where QALYs go wrong -- More on why not all life-years (even in perfect health) are equal.

Here's hoping it will lead bioethicists to rethink their lazy reliance upon Harris' objections to QALYs...

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