Public Health Professionals More Focused on Justice than Physicians

Joshua Greene and colleagues recruited 84 medical doctors and 69 public health professionals for some interesting morality experiments.  One hypothetical was “To save the lives of several patients who need brief access to life support, you need to pull the plug on a more gravely ill patient and redistribute the limited supply of machines in a hospital.”  (ScienceNOW)

There was a wide gap between physicians and administrators.  Nearly half of public health professionals were willing to pull the plug on a patient's life support to save others, compared with less than a third of doctors.  Not terribly surprising results.  Public health professionals, after all, are focused on the good of the community.  Physicians, in contrast, are focused on the good of the individual patient.