Ezekiel "Karl Brandt" Emanuel Proposed that Old People Should Die in a Flu Pandemic July 31, 2009 (LPAC)—As head of National Institute of Health (NIH) Bioethics, Emanuel proposed that, in case of an avian flu pandemic, the normal priority allocation of vaccines to elderly people first, should be scrapped.
Writing in Science May 12, 2006 (title: "Who Should Get Influenza Vaccine When Not all Can?"), Emanuel called for letting old people die as "an alternative ethical framework." This proposal he characterized as a "refined life-cycle allocation principle" (Life-CAP?): persons between 13 and 40 years are given priority because their lives have more value; the older ones already having had their run, and the very young having not had much investment in them yet.
This "life-cycle allocation principle" re-emerged in Emanuel's infamous January 31, 2009 Lancet article setting out the euthanasia strategy for the new Obama administration. Now he called it the "complete lives system," with the ages of those who would be saved shrunk a bit to 15-40.
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