I think people around 20 should be saved in priority. At that age, family and society have invested so much in that individual that him dying is a greater loss since he has not started to give back to society yet.
I was going to discuss the other parts of that question but decided not to. If we shouldn't treat all ages equally, which ones get priority? Some people share your view that dying at 20 is worse than dying at 5. The reason I usually hear is that the twenty year old's life is more formed but not lived.
Maybe the question is understood as "should passport age matter even when you correct for expected future lifespan" (as it kinda often is with things like transplants, which will fail in a couple of years but will extend the life for that time). Then they only negate the justice part while accepting the quality of life part.
Interesting. Suppose that people of various ages need some treatment, which will extend their life for five years. We can only treat one person. Whom should we treat? I'm still in favour of younger people because the older people have already lived the additional years, but the well-being effects might be similar for everyone (but this is also questionable).
Which transplants are you thinking of? For kidneys, living more than 10 years is pretty common and you're likely to live longer if you're younger: "Additionally, the patient survival rates at one, three, five, and 10 years were 91.27%, 86.46%, 81.17% and 78.15% respectively. There was a significant relationship between the age recipient and three-year graft survival rate (P=0.021). Additionally, there was an inverse and significant relationship between the donor age and 10-year patient survival rate (P=0.011)."
I was thinking of what's admittedly mostly hearsay about bone marrow transplants. But that's not the point, because what matters is that in principle, such a treatment is imaginable.
(To be clear, I agree with your judgment, I just don't think theirs is necessarily literally contradictory.)
Gotcha. My guess is that phrasing the questions differently or asking follow-ups would address the contradiction. If you ask a big-picture question, people are going to draw on their normative commitments (egalitarianism in this case), but when you ask something more detailed, the answer might change.
I think people around 20 should be saved in priority. At that age, family and society have invested so much in that individual that him dying is a greater loss since he has not started to give back to society yet.
I was going to discuss the other parts of that question but decided not to. If we shouldn't treat all ages equally, which ones get priority? Some people share your view that dying at 20 is worse than dying at 5. The reason I usually hear is that the twenty year old's life is more formed but not lived.
Maybe the question is understood as "should passport age matter even when you correct for expected future lifespan" (as it kinda often is with things like transplants, which will fail in a couple of years but will extend the life for that time). Then they only negate the justice part while accepting the quality of life part.
Interesting. Suppose that people of various ages need some treatment, which will extend their life for five years. We can only treat one person. Whom should we treat? I'm still in favour of younger people because the older people have already lived the additional years, but the well-being effects might be similar for everyone (but this is also questionable).
Which transplants are you thinking of? For kidneys, living more than 10 years is pretty common and you're likely to live longer if you're younger: "Additionally, the patient survival rates at one, three, five, and 10 years were 91.27%, 86.46%, 81.17% and 78.15% respectively. There was a significant relationship between the age recipient and three-year graft survival rate (P=0.021). Additionally, there was an inverse and significant relationship between the donor age and 10-year patient survival rate (P=0.011)."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8643514/
I was thinking of what's admittedly mostly hearsay about bone marrow transplants. But that's not the point, because what matters is that in principle, such a treatment is imaginable.
(To be clear, I agree with your judgment, I just don't think theirs is necessarily literally contradictory.)
Gotcha. My guess is that phrasing the questions differently or asking follow-ups would address the contradiction. If you ask a big-picture question, people are going to draw on their normative commitments (egalitarianism in this case), but when you ask something more detailed, the answer might change.