Abstract
The anthrax mailings following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States led to fears that victims of bioterrorism could overwhelm hospitals. The federal government convened experts to define how medical treatments should best be allocated across a population affected by a mass casualty disaster, a concept at first referred to as “altered standards of care,” later changed to the more palatable “crisis standards of care.” This work informed triage plans developed in the wake of the SARS outbreak in 2003, a novel respiratory pathogen that stressed critical care resources in advanced hospital systems, including Toronto’s. […]