Seattle Dialysis Allocation and Patient Selection

Title: Seattle Dialysis Allocation and Patient Selection
Date: 1962
Description: The Seattle Artificial Kidney Center opened in 1962 with dialysis capacity far below demand. Medically screened candidates could be referred to a lay Admissions and Policies Committee, which participated in selecting patients for scarce long-term dialysis.
ABP identifier: ABP-E-0008
Historical significance: Seattle's dialysis selection process made allocation of scarce life-sustaining treatment an explicit moral problem. It became an influential episode in later histories of biomedical ethics because it raised questions about social worth, professional authority, public participation, and distributive justice.
Intellectual stream: Justice & allocation; Clinical ethics & professionalism
Verification status: Verified
Evidence confidence: High
Open question: How did later bioethics histories transform the Seattle case into an origin story, and how should the project distinguish that retrospective interpretation from the allocation process itself?