TY - JOUR T1 - Why sore throats don't aggregate against a life, but arms do JF - Journal of Medical Ethics JO - J Med Ethics SP - 492 LP - 493 DO - 10.1136/medethics-2014-102036 VL - 41 IS - 6 AU - Alex Voorhoeve Y1 - 2015/06/01 UR - http://jme.bmj.com/content/41/6/492.abstract N2 - Part IV of Bioethical Prescriptions 1 masterfully joins philosophical imagination and rigour in its discussion of moral questions that arise in allocating scarce healthcare resources. I shall focus on a question on which Kamm's analysis yields remarkable insight, even though I disagree with some of her conclusions. The question is: Suppose that one must either (a) save all members of a group of A-people (who are otherwise fine) from an identical individual loss, short of death or (b) save a single young person, B, from a terminal illness, thereby restoring him to good health for a normal lifespan. What ought one to do?In Bioethical Prescriptions and elsewhere, Kamm argues for the following two-part answer: If the loss to each person in the A-group is very small, then one must save B's life, no matter how numerous the A-group. If the loss to each person in the A-group is close enough to B's loss, then for a very large number of people in the A-group, one is permitted to save the A-group. Kamm offers the following principle underlying (i): Each of us who is otherwise fine has a duty to suffer (at least) a relatively minimal loss (e.g., a sore throat) in order to save another person's life. So long as suffering the small loss is a duty for any given person, no number of the small losses can be aggregated to outweigh saving the life (p. 369).1 This antiaggregation principle has an … ER -