Health Care Rationing And Emerging Medical Technologies: Rough Justice, Ragged Edges, And Rugged Moral Terrain

Leonard Fleck is Professor of Philosophy and Medical Ethics in the Center for Ethics, College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University. His main areas of research are focused in the broad area of health care justice, more specifically, the question of how one goes about making fair rationing or cost control or priority-setting decisions when we have only limited resources and unlimited health care needs. In his recent book Just Caring: Health Care Rationing and Democratic Deliberation {Oxford University Press, 2009} he argues for an essential role for rational democratic deliberation in addressing these issues. At the Brocher Foundation he will be working on another monograph with the working title Justice, Liberty, and Responsibility: Genetics, Medicine, and Public Policy. This volume will also explore the role of rational democratic deliberation in addressing from a moral point of view a range of public policy issues generated by advancing genetic knowledge and technologies. He will also be working on an edited volume that will address some of the ethical challenges related to bedside rationing. His co-editors include Samia Hurst, Marion Danis, Ann Slowther, and Reidun Forde.