ABSTRACT
Although the authors believe it is useful to identify the relevant values and goals involved in catastrophic disease decisionmaking and to explore allegiance of the participants to these values and their competence and authority to act, they engage in this process for purposes of analysis not for constructing a "rational comprehensive" system. More in line with Lindblom's approach, this chapter presents proposals on the basis of incremental, self-correcting changes. It discusses allocation of resources, and maintains the distinctions between research and therapy. The chapter defines research as an innovative technique that is being applied to a limited number of cases, and treatment as the application of this technique to larger segments of the patient population. A distinction between research and therapy based on the number of patient-subjects involved, has two consequences for the formulation of policies on the allocation of resources for research.
