Biomedical Ethics Essays

Biomedical Ethics Essays Biomedical Ethics Paper Biomedical Ethics Paper The fair innings argument states that there is some reasonable length of a humans life, which is appropriate for he members of our society, three score and ten, seventy years. A person who managed to live up to seventy is considered to have had fair innings. Alan Williams, the author of the chapter, explains that it is considered to be unfair for the person to die at earlier age because of all of the opportunities a person than misses. If being guided by this argument we can say that the society should spend more resources on preserving and restoring of health of its young members, than for that of its older members. Williams also offers not to limit the notion of fair innings with the life span, but to analyze the quality of life a person had. The author believes that every person should be given a chance to have his/her fair innings. According to his concept, people who have already had theirs have to give others the opportunity to do it. Thus, in his opinion, the health needs of younger people should be given rather more weight than that of the older citizens. In fact he offers to set some socially acceptable number of years together with the quality of life; after a person crosses some age barrier, his health needs will be given lower priority than those of the younger ones. The members of the society we live in, declare that they do everything possible to eliminate the discrimination. The use of the concept of fair innings is the obvious manifestation of age discrimination, when older people fail to get the treatment that would have helped to improve the quality of their lives, because another person who is younger also need the resources used for to provide it. The resources of the society should be distributed to satisfy the basic needs of all of its members, but additional services should be given on the basis of paying capacity of the client. The value of life of all of the members of our society is equal; the practical use of the fair innings concept breaks this principle. Both youngsters and senile citizens should be offered equal opportunities for treatment, as all of those people pay taxes to the government, and they have the rights to demand the services they paid for from the government. One more thing is that people ant to continue living despite of the age and it is unjust to deprive them of that right despite of their age. But in the same time we can say that the efficiency of help given to the youngsters is greater than of that provided to the senile citizens, as they need fewer resources for to satisfy their needs. Time, human and material resources needed for to help one old person can improve the condition of several younger patients. Thus, it is more rational and morally justified to use the available resources for to fulfill the needs of the younger people, as more people would get help, while the same amount of resources would be spent.