Should moral factors enter into medical decisions? If so, which moral factors and whose moral values should be considered? It's an interesting question which is only partially answered in the article "Transplants and bad recipients".
Privacy, morality and ethics have long been tied together in disconcerting ways. While the question is raised whether or not criminals should be allowed to receive transplants which could have saved the lives of "good" people, the article does not address the very slippery slope that the question raises. If doctors can learn about a persons and make medical decisions about what they learn, what's to stop them from deciding not to treat individuals because they don't agree with their political views, religion, sexual orientation, etc...? While it's clear that doctors need complete medical history, and understand behaviour as it effects health, doctors should not learn more than that about patients and certainly should not make judgments based on non medical factors.
This is the privacy dilemma. It can be argued on both sides that more information affects the decision process. Is more information good or bad? Here are the questions from both sides of the argument: Do you really want doctors judging you instead of just treating you? What if a transplant saved the life of a criminal instead of saving the life of a loved one? It's easy to answer the questions if they affect you. But then again if you really think about the questions, maybe it's not so easy after all. What if your loved one was the criminal?
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