• Medical ethics

When I was an intern, I saw a patient whose heart transplant had failed. She was presenting for assessment for a second transplant. The heart had failed because of continued intravenous drug abuse. She was in a desperate state. “Are you going to retransplant her if she is a drug addict?” I asked my registrar. “We can't deny her a transplant for social reasons. But we can because her prognosis is poor.”

Issues of justice weave throughout this month's issue of the Journal.

In the Feature article, Bærøe and Bringedal address the issue of how just allocation of resources should take account of socioeconomic status, (see page 526). Higher socioeconomic status (SES) patients have better health and life expectancy, and use more health services. Bærøe and Bringedal ask: should clinicians give priority to individual patients with low SES in order to enhance health equity? They distinguish between four versions …