[dbt00]

I might agree with the decision to keep the one person alive, but right now we have limited numbers of machines and medical professionals to run them.

How many people would have to die because this one person is monopolizing the one (if any small N, even of one) ECMO machine before it’s unethical to keep them on it waiting to die of cancer?

[margalabargala]

Like most things, it's not that simple.

Frequently these machines are used for things like surgeries, which frequently may not need to be done right this day while still being important. Keeping this one person on it may simply have decreased the number of such surgeries that could be performed per day, mildly increasing patient wait time.

How much of an increase in surgical throughput is worth killing someone for?