Utilitarianism

Several countries all over the world are now facing and dealing hardly with COVID-19. The latter is very contagious and this made all countries, even the most powerful and the richest ones, unable to carry out and handle on the hundreds and millions cases. This has been the case of UK, Italy, US since few weeks. And whenever a pandemic occurs, Ethical dilemmas are spotlighted.

In fact, in many of these countries the number of critical cases who need to be hospitalized exceeds hardly the number of available beds all over the territory, the number of patients needing artificial ventilators is exceeding the current and available numbers of ventilators which makes the health care systems overwhelmed and put doctors and nurses in a critical situation: choosing who to treat and who to let die. In other words, young patients are prioritized over the old patients, which mean the priority with this limited health resources is for people who are more likely to survive and have more chance of therapeutic success.

This will take us to the utilitarian principle which is defined as “the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number” (McCombs School of Business – The University of Texas at Austin, 2020). In other words, utilitarianism is maximizing the benefits of the highest number of people and in this case Doctors and Nurses should save the maximum number of affected cases . Some people would consider it as unfair, and find it contradictory to the concept of individual rights believing that everyone has the right to be treated and to live. However, we cannot outpace this pandemic without sacrifices. In this context, Dr Lydia Dugale , professor of medicine and director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University, Said that if they treat old people, with bad survival odds and with low chance to survive, then not only will they die but also young people or people with high chance to survive will die (Olivia Goldhill, 2020). And that would be not beneficial for All the population. So, in this situation, It is obvious that the medical staff choose the better for the country applying the utilitarian bases working on the highest outcome of saving more lives.

Medical staffs have always been working on saving lives with available resources and have been always doing their duties for all patients who need to be treated. However, in pandemic situations with limited resources; Medical staffs have no choices and should save ones on the expense of others depending on their health situation. They are question to apply the utilitarian principle.

References:

https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/utilitarianism

https://qz.com/1821843/ethicists-agree-on-who-should-get-treated-first-for-coronavirus/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets-hospital-bed/607807/