In my article above, I cite an earlier article by Frances Kamm, ‘Deciding Whom to Help, Health-Adjusted Life Years, and Disabilities’, in Public Health, Ethics, and Equity, eds. S. Anand, F. Peters, and A. Sen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) (which was based on ‘Deciding Whom to Help, the Principle of Irrelevant Goods and Health-Adjusted Life Years’ (1999) circulated as a working paper of the Center for Population Studies, Harvard University). However, (1) I failed to correctly identify her position on one view that she took up in that article, and (2) also failed to cite a proposal she developed in that article similar to one I took up in my paper.
(1) First, I refer (p. 35) to ‘Kamm's Nonlinkage Principle’ to describe the view that linkage (which involves someone not receiving a benefit because of a past undeserved condition) is morally objectionable. However, I failed to note that she specifically rejects this principle in her article that I cited (p. 240).
(2) Second, I failed to note that in the same article, she developed an alternative, the Causative Principle, that distinguishes between (a) getting a better (or worse) outcome in one person than another by causing a better (or worse property) (e.g. unparalyzing or paralyzing someone) and (b) getting a better (or worse) outcome in one person than another in virtue of properties the person has independently of what we do (e.g. he is already not paralyzed). She argued that it might be morally acceptable to choose whom to treat on the basis of disability in an outcome when it came about in manner (a) even if not (b). She went on to raise problems for, and offer modifications to, the Causative Principle.
I regret these two instances of carelessness in my paper. I was interested in considering a wide range of positions on the disabilities problem for cost effectiveness and so failed in the first instance to note Kamm's rejection of the Nonlinkage principle (I in fact think it is more plausible than she does, but space limitations prevented considering more of her discussion of it). In the second instance I failed to cite her discussion of one of the positions I took up just as I did not cite all of the many other discussions of the disabilities and cost-effectiveness issue. My concern was with the different substantive positions I took up, but that does not excuse failing to cite her discussion.
