Ethical ideology and the allocation of scarce medical resources

This study was designed to determine the ethical beliefs upon which both medical and non-medical participants base their decisions when asked to construct a ranked waiting-list for treatment for patients suffering from kidney failure. Participants were given minimal demographic and medical data about hypothetical patients and were asked to rank them in order of priority for treatment. A participant's initial ethical position was determined by the Forsyth (1980) Ethical Ideology Questionnaire which provides a fourfold typology based on two factors (relativism and idealism). Each participant's personal demographic information was also obtained. The analysis yielded a main effect of the 'number of dependents' variable of the patient and its interaction with the 'religiousness' variable of the participants which reflected a utilitarian moral ideology working within an egalitarian framework. Implications of studies of this sort for sociomedical moral decision making and research on ethical and moral issues are discussed. The limitations of this sort of research are also considered.