Angela Wentz Faulconer, “Bringing Aid Versus Doing Harm Allocation versus Reallocation in Contexts of Scarcity“
The twin pressures of urgency and scarcity require us to prioritize who may keep and who will receive life critical goods like ventilators and maintenance drugs. It is often suggested that allocation and reallocation are the same in these contexts, just two sides of the same coin. I will explain why this is not so by contrasting end-of-life scenarios where patients desire to have life-saving treatment withdrawn with situations where the patient hopes to recover and desires to continue receiving treatment. Next, I will appeal to Philippa Foot’s framework in concluding that allocation of life critical goods is best understood as a bringing of aid, while reallocation of these same goods is best understood as an inflicting of injury, a doing of harm. The decision to reallocate life critical goods is thus a morally weighty one, especially for non-utilitarians.