Medical Ethics, Moral Courage, and the Embrace of Fallibility

Experts have an obligation to make difficult decisions rather than offloading these decisions onto others who may be less well equipped to make them. This commentary considers this obligation through the lens of drafting critical care rationing protocols to address COVID-19-induced scarcity. The author recalls her own experience as a member of multiple groups charged with the generation of protocols for how hospitals and states should ration critical care resources like ventilators and intensive care unit beds, in the event that there would not be enough to go around as the COVID-19 pandemic intensified. She identifies several obvious lessons learned through this process, including the need to combat the pervasive effects of racism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination; to enhance the diversity, equity, and inclusion built into the process of drafting rationing protocols; and to embrace transparency, including acknowledging failings and fallibility. She also comes to a more complicated conclusion: Individuals in a position of authority, such as medical ethicists, have a moral obligation to embrace assertion, even when such assertions may well turn out to be wrong. She notes that when the decision-making process is grounded in legitimacy, medical ethics must have the moral courage to embrace fallibility.