Who should get flu shots when there is a shortage of vaccines?
A recent Wall Street Journal article examines the ethics of flu vaccine rationing.
"You have 100 doses of a vaccine against a deadly strain of influenza that is sweeping the country, with no prospect of obtaining more. Standing in line are 100 schoolchildren and 100 elderly people.... Whom do you vaccinate?"Both the value of life and efficacy should be involved in the answer. With regard to the value of life, "a 60-year-old has invested a lot (measured in education and experience) in his life, but has also reaped most of the return. A child has minimal investment. A 20-year-old has great investment but has reaped almost none of the returns. Conclusion: To maximize investment in a life plus years of life left, 13- to 40-year-olds should have first claim on rationed vaccine, explains NIH's Ezekiel Emanuel."
A second ethical criterion, however, calls on us to protect those who are most vulnerable. Applying this criterion, if the elderly are most likely to die from a flu pandemic, then they should be vaccinated. Considering efficacy, if school-aged children are more likely to spread influenza, then possibly we could save more elderly by vaccinating children.
If you were in charge of allocating flu vaccinations, on what basis would you make your decisions?
[Thanks to James Dearden at Lehigh University for the bulk of this post.]
2 comments:
While some may argue that you should vaccinate the school-children since they will be the foundation of the future, others still insist on vaccinating the elderly because of their experience. If the decision were up to me, I would probably vaccinate 70 school-children and 30 elderly people. That way if school-aged children are more likely to spread the disease, most of them have been vaccinated, which would decrease the chance of disease spreading to elderly.
I generally agree with the article’s opinion. There are several criteria to determine whom to be vaccinated. First, if we exclusively focus on the people’s value, including both present value and potential value, I guess children are more likely to receive vaccine. But there is no denying that some elderly people are still energetic and powerful. Second, as the article says, “we should protect those who are most vulnerable.” Furthermore, I think we are also responsible to protect those who had made important contributions. These people had created much more value than others, so they deserve a better treatment after they retired. And also, we should consider some other factors, such as infection, efficiency and so forth. Hopefully, we can get a good solution to such problem.
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