One of the characteristics of a public health crisis is that health needs overwhelm available human and material resources. Difficult decisions must be made about how, where and to whom resources should be allocated. Medical science provides valuable information to help make these decisions. However, science alone is insufficient. Now consider that resource allocation decisions are just one kind of decision decision-makers face in preparing for, and getting through an influenza pandemic [9] . As a few scholars have begun to point out, pandemic planning needs to take ethical considerations seriously, and not allow the urgency of logistical and scientific needs to sideline a discussion of ethical considerations [10, 11] .