The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) its suggested is looking into recommending who receives particular treatments from the NHS depending on "Social Value Judgements". I think that sounds a little bit scary. I've just been to their website and browsed a pdf document, which goes into significant length about how these judgements will be developed. It is discussed under various headings including age, socio-economic class and self inflicted disease. This has already reached the news with a Trust limiting hip replacement to those people who are below a certain body mass index, before NICE published any guidelines. Am I the only one who finds this a frightening prospect?
Suffer the little children
17 hours ago
