ABSTRACT
Yet we do live in a society that allows people to die when it costs too much to save them. It happens all the time, in areas like road safety, workplace safety, overseas aid and - the subject of this book - in health care. In every society there are limited budgets for these matters, and spending more could save more lives. In many cases we even know roughly how much it would be necessary to spend to save another life. Overseas aid undoubtedly offers the least expen sive way of saving lives, since providing very basic medical care can save large numbers of lives in developing countries. The fact that we do not do this implies that we value the lives of members of our own society far more highly than we value the lives of members of other societies. Although this is a major ethical issue, it is not the one with which this volume is concerned. Henceforth we focus on decisions about the value of the lives of members of our own society, and leave problems about the international allocation of resources to one side.
