Justice is the fourth and final TJ/BC fundamental bioethical principle I shall evaluate from a libertarian rational natural-rights ethic viewpoint.
Justice is commonly defined as "giving to each that which is his due." Thus, justice is the provision of owed scarce healthcare resources by medical professionals to the appropriate patient(s). However, because the meaning of "that which is his due" is disputed by many non-libertarian philosophical traditions, there is no gold standard for justice in the physician/patient interaction. The plumbline libertarian has no objections to the common definition of justice when "giving to each that which is his due" is interpreted to mean that the scarce healthcare resources are owed to particular patients based on the voluntary exchange of justly acquired property.
Unfortunately, as noted in the previous paragraph, many bioethicists do not interpret "giving to each that which is his due" in the libertarian rational natural-rights manner. These bioethicists typically claim that bioethical justice cannot be achieved if allocation of scarce healthcare resources occurs in the libertarian way. They insist that bioethical justice can only be achieved if allocation of scarce healthcare resources is performed according to one of the non-libertarian (pro-aggression) conceptions of distributive justice {"fair" distribution). The plumbline libertarian obviously opposes the non-libertarian perversion of the principle of justice.
Skeptics of libertarian bioethical justice typically promote several alternative criteria (or factors) to support their non-libertarian, pro-aggression distributive justice theory. I shall evaluate those farcical criteria in a future blog post.
Justice is commonly defined as "giving to each that which is his due." Thus, justice is the provision of owed scarce healthcare resources by medical professionals to the appropriate patient(s). However, because the meaning of "that which is his due" is disputed by many non-libertarian philosophical traditions, there is no gold standard for justice in the physician/patient interaction. The plumbline libertarian has no objections to the common definition of justice when "giving to each that which is his due" is interpreted to mean that the scarce healthcare resources are owed to particular patients based on the voluntary exchange of justly acquired property.
Unfortunately, as noted in the previous paragraph, many bioethicists do not interpret "giving to each that which is his due" in the libertarian rational natural-rights manner. These bioethicists typically claim that bioethical justice cannot be achieved if allocation of scarce healthcare resources occurs in the libertarian way. They insist that bioethical justice can only be achieved if allocation of scarce healthcare resources is performed according to one of the non-libertarian (pro-aggression) conceptions of distributive justice {"fair" distribution). The plumbline libertarian obviously opposes the non-libertarian perversion of the principle of justice.
Skeptics of libertarian bioethical justice typically promote several alternative criteria (or factors) to support their non-libertarian, pro-aggression distributive justice theory. I shall evaluate those farcical criteria in a future blog post.
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