Rare Diseases, Common Dilemmas: LLMs Prioritize Equal Resource Distribution over Patient Benefit in Decision-Making

2026-08-25

AI Summary

研究通过208个罕见病案例评估了11种最新语言模型在临床决策中的伦理偏好，发现这些模型更倾向于公平分配资源而非根据患者需求或病情严重程度做出决定。

Abstract

Clinical decision-making often involves prioritizing ethical values, such as beneficence, non-maleficence, respecting a patient's autonomy, and justice. Recent work has begun to assess how large language models (LLMs) make such subjective, value-laden clinical judgments. However, evaluations of LLM decision-making in rare disease care contexts, where ethical tensions are ubiquitous and where scarce prior information likely impacts LLM behavior, are still lacking. Here, we present a benchmark of 208 clinically grounded rare disease vignettes, each of which presents genuine, high-stakes conflicts. When prompting 11 state-of-the-art LLMs to choose between clinically defensible yet ethically conflicting next steps embedded within these vignettes, we found that all evaluated models consistently prioritized justice over other core bioethical principles. Specifically, models overwhelmingly favor equal resource allocation over need-based considerations, indicating LLMs' limited responsiveness to differences in clinical severity or situational context. We also identify a strong authority-framing effect: models favor justice in committee-based contexts and shift toward beneficence and autonomy only when final decisions are framed as being made by clinicians or patients respectively. Our work suggests that institutional pressures surrounding rare disease resource utilization may be silently reflected in LLM-based decision support systems, with finer ethical considerations disregarded.

Problem

• Rare Diseases
• Clinical Decision-Making
• Ethical Values
• Large Language Models
• Justice

Innovation

• Large Language Models
• Rare Diseases
• Ethical Decision-Making
• Resource Allocation
• Authority Framing