"This book claims that an organisation such as the NHS is morally indefensible. Drawing on Peter Singer's arguments in favour of a duty of rescue, the author proposes that the levels of money spent on the NHS are unjustifiable. Loosely, if we accept a duty to save lives when the required sacrifice is small - as most of us do - then we ought also to accept certain sacrifices in the NHS in order better to fund foreign aid. This does not imply that the NHS is wrong: just that there is room to think that we ought seriously to re-evaluate our priorities. Very roughly, it is difficult to justify spending thousands of pounds on expensive medical interventions on one person in Britain when those same thousands could have a disproportionately large impact on saving lives elsewhere."--BOOK JACKET.