Age and Illness Severity: A Case of Irrelevant Utilities?

Jølstad, Borgar; Juth, Niklas

doi:10.1017/s0953820822000024

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…Egalitarian, prioritarian and sufficientarian theories of distributive justice are all sensitive to the extent that someone is either badly- or worse off (Hirose 2014 ). A number of factors, including pain, disability, anxiety, loss of life years, reduced social functioning, age of the patient, risk of death, and others, could plausibly be claimed to contribute to illness severity (Barra et al 2020 ; Jølstad and Juth 2022 ).…”

Section: Illness Severitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is possible that severity, rather than being sensitive to worse off-ness per se, is sensitive to worse off-ness relevant for healthcare priority setting. Jølstad and Juth ( 2022 ) have recently considered, and rejected, such a relevance claim regarding the relationship between severity and worse-off-ness as a function of small differences in age, but perhaps the suffering associated with non-adaptation should be considered irrelevant. As regards to (1) I will argue that the reduction in suffering associated with adaptation is good, but that we should accept that adaptation can still be bad for a person, all things considered, due to factors other than suffering.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Adaptation and illness severity: the significance of suffering

Jølstad

2023

Med Health Care and Philos

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Adaptation to illness, and its relevance for distribution in health care, has been the subject of vigorous debate. In this paper I examine an aspect of this discussion that seems so far to have been overlooked: that some illnesses are difficult, or even impossible, to adapt to. This matters because adaptation reduces suffering. Illness severity is a priority setting criterion in several countries. When considering severity, we are interested in the extent to which an illness makes a person worse-off. I argue that no plausible theory of well-being can disregard suffering when determining to what extent someone is worse-off in terms of health. We should accept, all else equal, that adapting to an illness makes the illness less severe by reducing suffering. Accepting a pluralist theory of well-being allows us to accept my argument, while still making room for the possibility that adaptation is sometimes, all things considered, bad. Finally, I argue that we should conceptualize adaptability as a feature of illness, and thereby account for adaptation on a group level for the purposes of priority setting.

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Section: Illness Severitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Adaptation and illness severity: the significance of suffering

Jølstad

2023

Med Health Care and Philos

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When Should Popular Views be Included in a Reflective Equilibrium?

Jølstad,

Juth,

Solberg

et al. 2024

Erkenn

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It has become increasingly common to conduct research on popular views on ethical questions. In this paper, we discuss when and to what extent popular views should be included in a reflective equilibrium process, thereby influencing normative theory. We argue that popular views are suitable for inclusion in a reflective equilibrium if they approximate considered judgments and examine some factors that plausibly contribute to the consideredness of popular views. We conclude that deliberation and familiarity contribute to the consideredness of popular views, whereas prevalence does not. Furthermore, we raise the “fair trial” objection: that expert deliberation on popular views might fail to respect the consideredness of these views. Eliciting views approximating considered judgments directly from participants is therefore preferable to refining popular views or treating them as “bare” intuitions in the reflective process. These conclusions have important implications for which research methods will likely elicit popular views suitable for a reflective equilibrium process. Research focusing on the prevalence of views is unlikely to yield popular views suitable for a reflective equilibrium, whereas deliberative and in-depth work is more promising.

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Age and Illness Severity: A Case of Irrelevant Utilities?

Cited by 2 publications

References 16 publications

Adaptation and illness severity: the significance of suffering

Adaptation and illness severity: the significance of suffering

When Should Popular Views be Included in a Reflective Equilibrium?

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