Benefit

It seems trendy - as least amongst creatures on Pluto - that clinical judgement should consider the benefit of the society as a whole.

Yes. Medical policy should have such a consideration. For example, although drug A for disease X is effective, the drug should not be freely provided for in government hospitals because of the prohibitory price - the society could make use of that sum of money to achieve a greater benefit to more people. (Communists and Marxists would disagree. We shall leave that discussion to a later day.)

But no, not for clinical decisions of treating individual patient. We do not give you drug A because of the cross-the-board policy, not because as an individual you are poor / black / have no use to us / from the Opposition Party.

Otherwise we move from being a god of our patients, which is what we are trained to be, to the grand god of the society - with the impossible assumption that we know what is good for the society.

That opens the Pandora Box.

PS. Medical policy with social consideration needs to be made by vertebrates - not mollusks on Pluto. That's why there's never such a policy in our city. You don't know what is mollusk ? Make a phonemic translation to Cantonese, and have a meeting with them !