Rule of Rescue

The Rule of Rescue is a term coined by A.R. Jonsen in 1986 that is currently used in a variety of bioethics contexts^[1]:

• 'a perceived duty to save endangered life where possible' (Bochner et al., 1994, pp901)
• 'the sense of immediate duty that people feel towards those who present themselves to a health service with a serious condition' (Nord et al., 1995b, pp90)
• 'an ethical imperative to save individual lives even when money might be more efficiently spent to prevent deaths in the larger population'(Doughety, 1993, pp1359)
• 'the powerful human proclivity to rescue a single identified endangered life, regardless of cost, at the expense of any nameless faces who will therefore be denied health care' (Osborne and Evans, 1994, pp779)

See also

• Triage

References

1. ^ McKie, John & Jeff Richardson (2003) "The Rule of Rescue" Social Science & Medicine Volume 56, Issue 12, June 2003, Pages 2407-2419