The call for 'triage' as a specific policy for the selection of patients presenting with chronic renal failure, in the light of increasingly limited resources prompted us to question nephrologist on their bases for selection. We discovered no absolute criteria for rejection, but a consensus of opinion against those with additional and complicating factors to their renal disease such as age, hepatitis carriers and mental illness-a bias seen throughout the National Health Service. In this paper we discuss the validity of (...) such criteria, the implications of the currently pragmatic and often covert practice of selection, and in this potentially finite area of demand we question the rationale for the limitation of resources. (shrink)