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Are clinical practice guidelines impartial?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2004

Joshua Cohen
Joshua Cohen
Affiliation:
Erasmus University Tufts University
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Abstract

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls demands from citizens who decide upon principles of justice and the rules derived from such principles that they abstract from all particularities that constitute their identity as unique individuals. This demand is unrealistic in policy settings where actual policy-makers convene to provide guidance, establish rules regarding public good, and enact legislation. In practice, I argue, policy-makers, legislators, and others involved in developing social rules that pertain to distributive justice formulate such rules as reasonably partial spectators. To illustrate, I show how clinical practice guidelines are established and mediated by a reasonably partial expert panel whose partial action is publicly justifiable, yet whose claims to impartiality are not.

Keywords

Clinical practice guidelineRationingDistributive justicePublic justification
Type
GENERAL ESSAYS
Information
International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , November 2004 , pp. 415 - 420
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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