On August 18, AI-HSS invited renowned American ethicist Professor Daniel Wikler, the Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a faculty member in the Department of Global Health and Population, to deliver a lecture titled “Dilemmas in Health Resource Allocation”. Professor Lei Ruipeng served as the moderator.

Professor Lei warmly welcomed and sincerely thanked Professor Wikler for coming to UESTC to deliver the academic lecture. She introduced Professor Wikler’s research background and the theme of the forum to the audience.

Through case studies, Professor Wikler immersed the attending faculty and students in the "Dilemmas in Health Resource Allocation”. He presented the “50 Pills Case”: “You are the head of a ward with 100 patients. Fifty of them need two pills to survive—one pill won’t work—while the other fifty need only one pill to survive. In all other respects, the patients are identical. You have only 50 pills. Which patients should receive the pills, and on what grounds should this selection be made?”

Professor Wikler asked the students to share their thoughts on this case. Throughout the process, he encouraged them to continually question each other’s approaches, analyzing the logic and reasoning behind each method. Under his guidance, the discussion became highly engaging, sparking a vibrant exchange of ideas.

In his concluding remarks, Professor Wikler emphasized that the students’ discussions about solutions and underlying reasons were, in essence, discussions in ethics. Ethical discourse does not begin by proposing a theory and then applying it to reality. Instead, it starts from real-world situations, proceeds through logical discussion, and only then proposes solutions.