MARK WASHOFSKY
being or citizen than another. On the other hand, we might just as well ask whether it is“just,” from the point of view of society as a whole, to make no distinctions between persons who either do not contribute to the community or harm it in some significant way and persons whose lives are a blessing to all. More importantly, we can legitimately doubt that this issue ought to be framed in terms of “justice” at all.
Suppose we ask not whether our decision is“just” but whether it is socially responsible? That is to say, we approach the decision of medical resource allocation not as a question of the comparative worth of persons but as one that demands that we make the choice that best serves the interests of the entire community, that aggregation of people that both supply those resources and, as individuals and as a collective, will be directly affected for good or for evil by the choice we make. To ask that question is to suggest avery different answer, one that expresses a very different view of what our moral duty requires of us.
THE ELDERLY AND MEDICAL RESOURCE ALLOCATION
We can now turn to a more informed discussion of our specific question, the place of the elderly in our medical-ethical decisions. Is it proper under our conception of Halakhah for physicians to use the age of a patient as a factor in patient selection? And Is it proper for society as a whole to allocate its medical resources in ways that some might describe as“discrimination” against the aged? In the third of Rabbi Feinstein’s responsa discussed near the outset of this paper, we are told that a zaken muflag, an elderly person, is entitled to treatment on an equal basis with one who is younger. Again, since Feinstein does not offer us much in the way
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