Covid-19 e criteri di ammissione alla terapia intensiva. Uno sguardo filosofico sulle Raccomandazioni Siaarti

During the most acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, a problem of shortage of mechanical ventilators in intensive care units emerged in Italy. The Italian Society of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care (Siaarti) has released the Recommendations of clinical ethics for admission to intensive treatments and their suspension, in exceptional conditions of imbalance between needs and available resources, suggesting some specific allocation criteria of health resources in a condition of their extraordinary scarcity. The paper discusses these criteria from a philosophical point of view and argues that they generate the risk of discrimination against elderly people, the so-called ageism, more than one might apparently be led to think.