Yes or no to this statement end of life care we can't afford to keep it to

everybody so we're gonna have to ration it. Is that right or is that wrong? Well

since probably all of us at some point want to have our crack at it when it's

our turn but probably all of us in the meantime we're gonna have to pay for it

for everybody else and since there really are two serious sides to this

argument then let's make a debate of it I'm John Donovan a debate from

intelligence squared US we have four superbly qualified debaters two against

two who will be arguing for and against this motion ration and of life care

on the side arguing for the motion ration end of life care Arthur Kellerman the

Paul O'Neill Alcoa chair in policy analysis at the Rand Corporation and

you worked in and you taught emergency medicine for about a quarter of a

century I want to ask you do you think the rest of us we civilians in this

world really have any idea how often these end of life decisions come up in

the ER John we save a lot more lives than we lose but we deal with the issues

we're gonna debate tonight far more often than anyone realizes okay and your

partner Peter Singer Peter Singer a professor of bioethics at Princeton and you

wrote in the New York Times a few years back that a system of rationing care

should include measures of the quality of life but not judgments about moral

character or social value why not well I think that's not the business of

physicians I think they can judge there are ways of judging quality of life and

life expectancy but moral character is something different it's too subjective I

think I wouldn't like to see it used as a criteria in there our motion is this

...