Ubel P A, Loewenstein G
Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 1996 Apr;42(7):1049-55. doi: 10.1016/0277-9536(95)00216-2.
The transplant system has been criticized for not paying enough attention to efficiency in distributing scarce organs. But little research has been done to see how the general public views tradeoffs between efficiency and equity. We surveyed members of the general public to see how they would distribute organs among patients with varying chances of benefiting from them. In addition, we asked subjects to explain their decisions and to tell us about any other information they would have liked in order to make the decisions. We found that the public places a very high value on giving everyone a chance at receiving scarce resources, even if that means a significant decrease in the chance that available organs will save people's lives. Our results raise important questions about whether the aims of outcomes research and cost-effective studies agree with the values of the general public.
移植系统因在分配稀缺器官时对效率关注不足而受到批评。但对于公众如何看待效率与公平之间的权衡，所做研究甚少。我们对普通公众进行了调查，以了解他们会如何在受益机会各异的患者之间分配器官。此外，我们要求受试者解释他们的决定，并告知我们为做出这些决定他们还希望了解哪些其他信息。我们发现，公众非常重视让每个人都有机会获得稀缺资源，即便这意味着可用器官挽救生命的几率会大幅降低。我们的研究结果引发了关于结果研究和成本效益研究的目标是否与普通公众的价值观相符的重要问题。
