Abstract
This is the strong response of Dr. Louis Del Guercio to the prospect of cutbacks in federal support for critical care, taken from his 1977 presidental address to the Society For Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Del Guercio’s remarks illustrate one side of a continuing controversy about how much society ought to invest in critical care medicine, the care of patients with severe, life-threatening illness or injury. This paper will be devoted to an examination of that controversy. First, however, I would like to place the controversy within the broader context of concern about the cost of health care.
Article Note
Once we as physicians start making decisions regarding who is or is not worthy or deserving of our best efforts, we revert to black and white magic. Physicians will then see again fear in the eyes of their patients — not fear of pain or fear of death but fear of the physician …. Because of the nature and costs of our practice, we intensivists are the first to feel such pressure to bend our principles. We must also be the first to resist ([14], p. 169).
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Moskop, J.C. (1985). Allocating Resources within Health Care: Critical Care vs. Prevention. In: Moskop, J.C., Kopelman, L. (eds) Ethics and Critical Care Medicine. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5233-1_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5233-1_11
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