Poll: Kill one to save ten?
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however, using a line from the 3 laws of robotics, you may not hurt someone though your action or inaction. (this was also meant as how humans should live)ZeeClone said:
Depends on the family situation. If the organ donor has no immediate family, kill the poor bastard and take his organs, if the organ recipients have no immediate family, let them all die. and if nobody has any family, or if they all have families, flip a coin.
I would try to save the man's life. I am not God. i cannot damn a man to save others. however, do not condemn those who said yes. some people have emotional damage, and thus can only think logically. these people have been asked if they would doom their brother to save 10 workers from an incoming railroad, and they said yes.
Think of it this way
Your in the car accident what do you want the docter to do?
My choice is kill me to save the others I'm not worth much to society.
Your in the car accident what do you want the docter to do?
My choice is kill me to save the others I'm not worth much to society.
It really does depend on who i kill and who the ten people around me are...if the guy i had to kill was dane cook then yes, absolutely! But if the guy i had to kill was ...my best friend and the 10 people around were twilight fangirls...then i would let the guy go!
im gonna have fun with this, House.versoth said:YAY
Thanks for giving me a thread to lament our false sanctity of life.
I appreciate it.
I disagree with the notion that all lives are equal, and that all actions undertaken must "save as many lives" as possible.
Bear with me.
I will start with something familiar to many Escapists, the game Mass Effect. In one conversation, when Shepard is talking to Captain Anderson, Anderson says that Saren is willing to slaughter anyone in his path to complete his objective. One of Shepard's response options is something to the effect of "Sometimes you have to kill a thousand to save a million."
I take issue with that. A thousand what? A thousand cube monkeys? A thousand homeless people who live off welfare (or the equivalent) and contribute absolutely nothing to the world? A thousand genetic researchers working on developing a cure for AIDS or cancer? A thousand of the bravest, most skilled and loyal soldiers in the military have to die to save...who? A million cube monkeys or bums?
You cannot take "lives" and put it down to numbers, and do whatever has the highest number. Not all lives are created equal. We as a culture find this opinion appalling, revolting, inhumane, whatever. We don't like thinking about it. For the most part we don't have to. We like to think of everyone as equal. We like to think of the one as more important than the whole.
But let's take the thread's example. Use the organs from one person to save the lives of ten others.
Who are they? Is the one man a nobody and the ten people the most important philosophical minds alive? Are half of them the most important philosophical minds and the other half homeless bums, while the one to be potentially sacrificed is a middle manager at some paper distribution firm? What is the true value of the lives to be saved versus the lives to be lost?
Here we go.
Sit down and strap in.
To determine the "value" of a person, we need a goal. Something that all human lives can be measured as to their work towards. When I ponder this topic I like to use as a goal the unity and peace of all humanity. A noble goal, I think. So, all persons have some "value" towards the group's progress towards that goal ("group" means "everyone on earth" basically). A homeless bum with neither the means nor the motivation to hold down a useful job (all of which, in some way, (jobs) stimulate the economy) has less value towards global peace and prosperity and unity than, say, the leader of a nation.
But, things are not quite that simple. The leader of a nation, a powerful nation especially, can be either of great importance in working towards that goal or can be a great resistive force, working against the goal. Whether or not a person's work is valuable towards a goal can depend on the observer's beliefs as to what is the best way to go about achieving that goal.
Here's an example. A new President comes into office in the United States. This president is in favor of nationalizing all businesses within the United States, placing them under direct government control. Is this working for or against the goal of world peace? Some say "yes, the competition that results from private ownership of wealth-generating operations will hold us back as a species, as the cutthroat world of business will override all human morality and compassion, making us cold-hearted slaves to the dollar! Praise the President!" while others will exclaim "Nay, the lack of competition will stop innovation and we as a nation will fall behind other, free nations! We must build a better mousetrap, because there are still mice!" The value of that President's life is vastly different depending on who is doing the valuation, but both sides will agree that the work of that person will make a significant progress, either forward or backward. As opposed to a homeless bum who will not make a difference either way.
The point I'm getting at here is that these choices are not as cut and dried as some of us may think. Let's say you saved the ten and let the one die. What if that one would have found a cure for some disease, saving millions of lives in the future? Then is it worth ten lives? What if the ten start a hateful, long, bloody war? What will you (more importantly, the history books) think of your choice?
All one can do is make the most logical decision that one can, and hope it works out. Chances are you had no way of knowing that "saving the most lives" would kill many more.
OT: If the ten are bums and the one is a leading researcher in a truly valuable scientific field (again, valuable towards the goal of world peace and unity and all that) then the ten die, the one lives. If the one is a bum and nine of the ten are bums but one is the researcher, save the ten. Maybe the nine will make some good with their lives. Maybe they will provide organs to save another researcher later down the line
I apologize to the throngs of people I inevitably offend, and I look forward to philosophical people with a lot of time on their hands picking my arguments apart.
The problem with this hypothetical is that it's really killing one for the CHANCE to save ten (or the opposing choice is to maybe save one and probably kill ten). Also, it's got us imagining whether we're doctors or not, and whether euthanasia is ethical considering the Hippocratic oath (something already hotly debated and contested in the medical community). Due to the nature of modern medicine as well as hospitals, there's a number of crucial flaws with this hypothetical. Firstly, he's been in a car accident. That's basically where he's been crushed to near death by tons of metal. Could you get 10 different (which means they're all spread out) healthy organs from him? Was he a smoker? Was he an alcoholic? Is he obese? Did he do intravenous drugs? All of these help limit the number of organs we can get from him, and in the case of the last one, might even totally eliminate our chances of getting anything (i.e. we don't want to give AIDS to our patients). Also, we have to account for the fact that unless the 10 dying patients are Decuplets (10 children who were all born on the same day from the same mother) and Mr. Car-accident is their eleventh sibling, then the likelihood of his being a match for all 10 different people is a joke. Of course, we could opt to attempt to save him, which could have far reaching problems, such as adding an eleventh person to this clearly undersupplied organ waiting list. And, if in some freak stroke of chance, he was number 11 out of the 11 identical eleven brothers (let's say he was hit by an ambulance coming to visit them at the hospital), well, a live-organ donation is far more likely to take than a post-mortem organ donation. Which also raises another question: Is he an organ donor? Will his next of kin sign the release forms to let them cut him open and harvest? I dunno how I'd feel if my dead relative's doctor first words were "He's dead. I'm sorry. We'd like to cut out 10 different vital organs out of him for donation purposes." Oh, and another thing, organ waiting lists are lists for a reason. There's an order. You have to wait. So even if you do get all this stuff out of his mangled corpse, you won't get to just stick them in your patients, you'll have to send them out, unless all your patients are at the top of the waiting lists.
The better version of this ethical dilemma is the one where you have to choose to rout the train to either hit 10 people or to drop one guy onto the tracks in front of it to get run over.
The better version of this ethical dilemma is the one where you have to choose to rout the train to either hit 10 people or to drop one guy onto the tracks in front of it to get run over.
Depends entirely on who the one and the ten are.
Otherwise, I'd save the ten. If a man gets carted into the hospital after a car crash with a body full of somehow pristine organs that are the one and only match for ten different patients, then that's a bit more than coincidence.
Otherwise, I'd save the ten. If a man gets carted into the hospital after a car crash with a body full of somehow pristine organs that are the one and only match for ten different patients, then that's a bit more than coincidence.
No, I would save the patient.
If I was feeling guilty about it I would ask the patient if he wanted to give up his life to save 10, but that would only make him feel guilty if he says no.
If I was feeling guilty about it I would ask the patient if he wanted to give up his life to save 10, but that would only make him feel guilty if he says no.
This, if you're a doctor, you can only attempt to save people, you don't have the power to pretty much play God over who lives and who dies.Cliff_m85 said:
i would kill one person to save 10 people i don't know, but i would also kill 10 to save one i care about
No.
I know that the utilitarian thing to say would be: Sure, go ahead, do it.
But my morality, as I've said in the past, is based mostly on one thing: fairness. The man who is dying on the operating table is not involved with the affairs of the others. He is not connected to them in any way - he didn't cause their illness, and neither did they his. He should not be involved in their case, and therefore, should not have to die for them. At the end of the day, the others fell sick from natural causes, not by some nefarious machination.
I deeply care about the concept of fairness - asking someone to die for people he has never met and has never been involved with, whose illness he did not cause, is unfair.
Of course, if they WERE linked in some way, for example, if the medicine that could save that man could also be used to save ten other people, then obviously you use that medicine to save those other people. But this isn't an either/or situation. I know the questioner has said "suppose there are no other ways to get an organ to those ten people", but the real world does not work that way. I find it highly unlikely that such an event would EVER arise, but even if it did, I could not support such an action.
There is also the fact that I am playing a key role here. My decision has a direct impact - I deliberately kill someone, when I have the chance to save them. It isn't the same case as if a diabolical mad-man has ten people in a cage over a lava pit and one man in a cage over another lava pit, and I have to choose - in either case, the villian is the one who kills. I only make the choice over who he kills, but the decision is in his hands. With respect to the case that you outlined above, I, as a doctor, have the ability to DELIBERATELY kill someone in order to save two people - which goes beyond mere choice.
Now, the utilitarian would say that just because I would feel squeamish about getting my hands dirty, doesn't change the fact that at the end of the day, ten people survive and one would die. True. And I didn't injure or hurt anyone involved in this case.
But the point still remains - by killing this person I am bringing him/her into the situation of the other ten people, a situation that they had nothing to do with. I cannot do that - it is unfair, and fairness is what guides my morality.
I know that the utilitarian thing to say would be: Sure, go ahead, do it.
But my morality, as I've said in the past, is based mostly on one thing: fairness. The man who is dying on the operating table is not involved with the affairs of the others. He is not connected to them in any way - he didn't cause their illness, and neither did they his. He should not be involved in their case, and therefore, should not have to die for them. At the end of the day, the others fell sick from natural causes, not by some nefarious machination.
I deeply care about the concept of fairness - asking someone to die for people he has never met and has never been involved with, whose illness he did not cause, is unfair.
Of course, if they WERE linked in some way, for example, if the medicine that could save that man could also be used to save ten other people, then obviously you use that medicine to save those other people. But this isn't an either/or situation. I know the questioner has said "suppose there are no other ways to get an organ to those ten people", but the real world does not work that way. I find it highly unlikely that such an event would EVER arise, but even if it did, I could not support such an action.
There is also the fact that I am playing a key role here. My decision has a direct impact - I deliberately kill someone, when I have the chance to save them. It isn't the same case as if a diabolical mad-man has ten people in a cage over a lava pit and one man in a cage over another lava pit, and I have to choose - in either case, the villian is the one who kills. I only make the choice over who he kills, but the decision is in his hands. With respect to the case that you outlined above, I, as a doctor, have the ability to DELIBERATELY kill someone in order to save two people - which goes beyond mere choice.
Now, the utilitarian would say that just because I would feel squeamish about getting my hands dirty, doesn't change the fact that at the end of the day, ten people survive and one would die. True. And I didn't injure or hurt anyone involved in this case.
But the point still remains - by killing this person I am bringing him/her into the situation of the other ten people, a situation that they had nothing to do with. I cannot do that - it is unfair, and fairness is what guides my morality.