Reference no: EM133675866

Question

Consider the following fictitious scenario: Washington D.C. has just been attacked with a deadly, chimeric biological weapon---a binary weapon---that has found its way into the metro water supply. Oh, you happen to be living in the suburbs at the time---Alexandria, Leesburg, Bethesda, Gaithersburg, Frederick---well, you get the picture. Hospitals and ER clinics have been swamped with sick patients-a surge capacity thing-the worried well, and many doctors and nurses have also succumbed to this confounding disease. Corpses are piling up faster than the beltway morgues can process them! It's not a pretty sight. It's a good thing I live on 9 acres in the Ohio. How should the government, indeed, society allocate scarce resources like hospital beds, doctors and nurses, availability to life-saving medicines and more? Such arguments about "lifeboat ethics" are generally divided into two main categories: utilitarian and egalitarian. Utilitarians would argue that such scarce resources with overflowing hospitals and clinics should be devoted to those patients that have the longest life spans and that the docs should first treat folks that are young and who are not already so sick so that they are likely to survive this crisis. More specifically, hospitals should save people with scarce and.