I suppose I can brag about not brainwashing my students, but this is hollow consolation. As for distributive justice, it must be based on a basic assumption of equality. One may choose to treat certain patients before others for medical reasons, such as in a multi-victim disaster where the principles of Pre Hospital Trauma Life Support require treating bleeding victims before those whose breathing and pulse have ceased because there is a greater chance of saving the former than the latter. But one must assume a basic equality and not treat one before the other just because the first is a great scientist and the second a petty thief. But, as I learned in a lecture which I heard by the Israeli philosopher Joseph ben Shlomo, no empirical or scientific investigation can show that people are equal.
Empirical observation reveals only differences among people.
Only transcendental considerations of our relationship to upper worlds can reveal basic equality of meaning of all our lives. As for autonomy, much can be learned from the fact that we really cannot know the ultimate meaning of life. Autonomy is usually interpreted as the right to informed consent. And nowadays people appeal to autonomy to justify a supposed right to die. But there can be no informed consent to die.