The UK is soon to become the first nation routinely to immunize babies against Meningitis B. However, the decision took over a year from the Department of Health being recommended that Bexsero MenB vaccine should be made available to children.
Why the delay? Unsurprisingly - Discussions on price.
Of course value for money and risk/benefit calculations are the mainstay of modern healthcare and inevitable by-products of factors like increased life expectancy and healthcare advances. But is there an added ethical dimension to this particular decision?
Meningitis B is every parent’s nightmare – especially those of the very young. Victims it does not kill are often left with brain damage or requiring limb amputations. Case studies of children coping with brain injury or the loss of arms or legs are hard to take – it cuts to the very core of what it means to be human.
However, it is tempting to let these feelings overwhelm the rational – I admire those who can weigh up the pros and cons to best serve the greater good. I know I couldn’t.
I’m reminded of a recent US case that perhaps demonstrates the other side of the coin. A hospital was reluctant to give a teenager a heart transplant as he had a history of “non-compliance” with medical advice. In the end, he did receive the operation and then died two years later. Not of any cardiac problems but after a high speed car chase with the police following an armed robbery.
Would the hospital have given the go-ahead for the operation with the benefit of hindsight? Even ignoring the way the teenage died, the fact that he did so after only two years could seem like a waste of a perfectly good heart.
Then we have the leagues of smokers and the clinically obese, whose life choices almost wilfully seem to cost health care systems billions a year.
But babies are innocents – they have made no life choices, wise or not. Shouldn’t this be recognised? How many children died whilst the price negotiations were taking place? Surely one is far too many? I believe the actual answer is around 12.
It’s no accident that the mascot of the World Wildlife Fund is the Giant Panda – it affects us on an emotional level that the average endangered dung beetle would find it hard pressed to match.
Although it is very tempting to let both positive and negative emotions rule healthcare decisions, I can’t help thinking that this is a road that most of us less than perfect individuals would really rather not go down.
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