Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel (former White House Chief of Staff and current Mayor of Chicago), is an easy target for ridicule for a libertarian bioethicist. Dr. Emanuel is a liberal communitarian who espouses a statist system of allocation of scarce health care resources. Ron Shirtz, however, in an August 15 2009 article titled "Political Triage: The Creation of a Health Care Class System", has already accomplished the task.
Shirtz critiques Dr. Emanuel's infamous 2009 Lancet article in which the eminent madman advocates distribution of health care resources by the state via "youngest-first allocation ... combined with prognosis and lottery principles in a multiprinciple allocation system." What? Shirtz rightly labels this scheme "a progressive-era eugenics manifesto."
But Shirtz's primary contribution to my knowledge is his resurrection of a 1996 Hastings Center report authored by Dr. Emanuel. This report reveals that Dr. Emanuel is a Platonist (and that is not a compliment). Dr. Emanuel writes that " ... the just allocation of health care resources - can be addressed only by invoking a particular conception of the good ... that should inform policies on these nonconstitutional political issues." To paraphrase, liberal communitarian philosopher doctors must advise the state on the "just" allocation of scarce health care resources based on a liberal communitarian pro-aggression philosophy that ignores individual beneficence, nonmaleficence, and autonomy. Excuse me, Dr. Emanuel, but I have not, do not, and shall not consent to that tyranny.
I recommend Ron Shirtz's article.
I do not recommend Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel.
Shirtz critiques Dr. Emanuel's infamous 2009 Lancet article in which the eminent madman advocates distribution of health care resources by the state via "youngest-first allocation ... combined with prognosis and lottery principles in a multiprinciple allocation system." What? Shirtz rightly labels this scheme "a progressive-era eugenics manifesto."
But Shirtz's primary contribution to my knowledge is his resurrection of a 1996 Hastings Center report authored by Dr. Emanuel. This report reveals that Dr. Emanuel is a Platonist (and that is not a compliment). Dr. Emanuel writes that " ... the just allocation of health care resources - can be addressed only by invoking a particular conception of the good ... that should inform policies on these nonconstitutional political issues." To paraphrase, liberal communitarian philosopher doctors must advise the state on the "just" allocation of scarce health care resources based on a liberal communitarian pro-aggression philosophy that ignores individual beneficence, nonmaleficence, and autonomy. Excuse me, Dr. Emanuel, but I have not, do not, and shall not consent to that tyranny.
I recommend Ron Shirtz's article.
I do not recommend Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel.
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