Research Project
Ageism in the Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources: Nature, Justification, and Problems
Contemporary societies are undergoing profound demographic transformations. As a result of increased longevity and declining birth rates, the proportion of older adults is steadily rising, intensifying the need to determine what is owed to this age group as a matter of justice. In the allocation of healthcare resources, this issue acquires critical urgency. Ageism in this field (at both micro and macro-allocation levels) argues that younger patients have priority moral claims over healthcare resources. Among the arguments justifying healthcare ageism, those centered on the value of equality have gained the most traction. Distributive egalitarianism contends that age-based discrimination is compatible with diachronic equality between individuals and that adopting an ageist bias ensures a fairer distribution of the relevant good (years of life) in favor of the worst-off patients (namely, the youngest). My hypothesis is that healthcare ageism is only justifiable if it adopts restrictions that guarantee relational equality and prevent healthcare policies from expressing a negative judgment on the value of the lives of older adults. I will refer to this position as “restricted ageism”. Based on this hypothesis, I will evaluate the feasibility of two public policy proposals: the implementation of a morally weighted lottery and a bias-compensation model (pro-young ageism in therapeutic resources and pro-elderly ageism in preventive resources).
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Biografische Angaben
Federico Abal has a PhD in Philosophy (University of Buenos Aires). Lecturer in Moral Philosophy in the School of Law at the Torcuato Di Tella University (Argentina) and in Jurisprudence in the School of Law at the University of Buenos Aires. He is also a Fogarty Mentor on Bioethics at FLACSO and a Young Researcher Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. His PhD project was about the morality of defensive force against conditional threats. His research topics are mainly pacifism and bioethics (especially ageism, palliative care, pro-natalism, distribution of scarce resources, and euthanasia). -
Publikationen
(2026 - forthcoming) "Ageism in the Allocation of Therapeutic Resources: Its Nature, Justification, and Problems", The Linacre Quarterly. (2026 – with Weston, G. & Azab, S.) “Declining fertility rate: causes, Catholic desiderata, and openness to life”, Medicina y Ética, Vol. 37, N° 3, pp. 893-950. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36105/mye.2026v37n3.04 (2025) “Military abolitionism: on a duty to transition towards a nonviolent defensive system and its impact on the war-making dimension”, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 24, N° 3-4, pp. 282-298. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2025.2593095 (2025) “Euthanasia, anti-egalitarian bias, and breach of the duty of medical care: A reply to Rivera López”, Bioethics, Vol, 39, N° 7, pp. 716-722. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.13439