Adequate Conscious Life and Age-Related Need

There are arguments for favouring younger lives in patient selection that do not propound the maximization of medical utility. They claim instead that a preference for saving younger lives is justified by fairness. I want to challenge this claim over the next two chapters. One of the most intricate and challenging such arguments is made by Frances Kamm. Eric Rakowski, Daniel Callahan and Robert Veatch have also contributed to this literature. I will discuss these arguments in turn with a view to challenging their central claim about the fairness of saving younger lives. I will consider Kamm and Rakowski in this chapter. Veatch and Callahan are discussed in chapter six.