https://doi.org/10.4081/mem.1996.901
Some ethical considerations concerning the "quality of life as a guidance in assigning health resources
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Authors
Managing scarce resources is a troublesome problem common to all human activities. Dealing with health resources is particularly difficult because people are directly involved. The key issue in correctly assigning health resources is finding consistent criteria to support the right decisions.
During the last few years, the so called "quality of life" has become an increasingly popular concept, although its use has many ethical drawbacks. This speech tries to outline a few ethical issues that arise when we try to use "quality of life" as a decision criterion to evenily dstribute scarce health resources.
All "quality of life" measures have severe methodological fallbacks although intensive research is being carried out to achieve proper statistical tools to deal with this new kind of data. Adding the term quality to the term life becomes quite confusing. In the end, one would think that since there is such thing like a low quality life, life is not worth living and there is no point on preserving it.
Ontologically speaking, a human being is substance, while quality is just one of its multiple accidents, not a goal in itself. The essential principle: "all human beings are equally respectable" can not overseen. Unfortunately this principle alone does not solve the problem of managing scarce health resources.
From the macroeconomist point of view, cost-utility studies help decision making, but we must bear in mind that economist should serve people and the contrary shows itself as absolutely perverse. Quality of life measures also have a small impact in everyday clinical decision making. In this context, the whole dimension of the patient who seeks assistance should be taken into account, not just a bare measure of the quality of his life.
The quality of life is an ambiguous term. It can be easily used against human rights and dignity. Many authors have already pointed out the problems surrounding its practical uses. Therefore, the "quality of life" should not be used alone as if it was the only objective criterion avalaible. We must bear in mind that caring for people is hard and can not be standardised with algorithmic paths, no matter how sophisticated they might be.
How to Cite
PAGEPress has chosen to apply the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) to all manuscripts to be published.
An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions:
- the author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
- a complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.