Philosophical Question - Kill 1 to Save 5?

I recently came across this moral question, and I thought it was kind of interesting.

Quote:

Imagine yourself to be a surgeon, a truly great surgeon. Among other things you do, you transplant organs, and you are such a great surgeon that the organs you transplant always take. At the moment, you have five patients who need organs. Two need one lung each, two need a kidney each, and the fifth needs a heart. If they do not get those organs today, they will all die; if you find organs for them today, you can transplant the organs and they will all live. But where to find the lungs, the kidneys, and the heart? The time is almost up when a report is brought to you that a young man who has just come into your clinic for his yearly check-up has exactly the right blood-type and is in excellent health. Lo, you have a possible donor. All you need to do is cut him up and distribute his parts among the five who need them. You ask, but he says, "Sorry. I deeply sympathize, but no." Would it be morally permissible for you to operate anyway?

- Judith Jarvis Thompson,"The Trolley Problem" Yale Law Journal, 1985

For those who recoil at the sight of a big paragraph, the question is this:

As a surgeon, you can kill one person, against his will, and use his organs to save save 5 others.

Do you do it? Why or why not?

No...

For one, you asked his permission, and he said no, if you were to sacrifice him it would simply be murder, murder, to me for any purpose is immoral...

Reason 2, maybe he could be the person in the future that may either discover a cure for cancer, or develop an artificial organ replacement program that would require no donor organs, ie: artificial organs to replace any or all of a persons organs. In turn, he saves many more lives than just 5, so in theory, you just sacrificed 5 lives to save 100 or more lives in the future...

Quote:

Originally posted by Demodad68

Reason 2, maybe he could be the person in the future that may either discover a cure for cancer, or develop an artificial organ replacement program that would require no donor organs, ie: artificial organs to replace any or all of a persons organs. In turn, he saves many more lives than just 5, so in theory, you just sacrificed 5 lives to save 100 or more lives in the future...

Eh, that's not the same though; the difference is your situation a hypothetical, whereas in the posed situation you know the outcomes. You do it and 5 live for 1 death, you don't 5 die and 1 lives - for sure.

If you want to go down that road, I could argue that maybe he gets hit by a bus as soon as he leaves your office and now you have 6 dead people and none living. Or he gets in his car after leaving the office and gets into an accident with a school bus killing 20 little kids and himself. Etc. You could come up with these all day long.

The point was that you know, for sure, that either 5 people will die or 1 person will die, and you get to pick which is the better outcome, given the circumstance.


"No" is a perfectly fine answer, I just don't want it to be because of some other random variable that we decide to arbitrarily add.

Fair enough, I will stick by my first reason then

I feel compelled to make another comment though, for the people that would say yes, it is ok to sacrifice 1 to save 5...

And I'm not trying to start a debate, as this is a hypothetical moral question...

But, what authority does a person have to play "god" and decide who should live and who should die...

Just something to think about...

I voted yes because that's kind of what I think the most humane thing to do is, although I have to say if it were a real world situation, I would probably go with no, since I'm not a big fan of being in jail for long periods of time.


But to answer your question (with another question lol), isn't the surgeon playing god every day when he implants organs into people who would die without his intervention?

Thats an easy one to answer actually

No, the surgeon isn't playing god, he/she may "think" they are god, but in reality I think the surgeon is only doing what they can to make someones quality of life better, and that to me isn't playing god, that is being a humanitarian...

Well, then I can argue that a surgeon taking the organs from the healthy patient isn't playing god, he's just doing what he can to make the quality of 5 peoples' lives better - at the expense of one. And isn't saving 5 better than saving 1?



Also, I'm sad this poll only has two votes so far. People must have lives or something on a Friday night.

Then I can say, no, he isn't playing god so long as the person he gets the organs to save the 5 from come from a person that voluntarily donates said organs. Now if the surgeon gets the organs from a healthy person, whom denies to voluntarily give up the organs, then the surgeon is playing god by deciding who is to live and who is to die...

Man I hope that makes sense, debating was never my strong suit








Wonder what it's like to have a life

The sacrifice of one for five is idiotic. Better five die and one lives then to rob a person of their free will. The same is true with all things such as it is better 10 guilty men go free then convict an innocent man of crimes he did not commit. I have never bought into the kill one so many will live. There are too many people as it is, and if you kill the one so many live you are denying nature its true course. Civilization is built not on the great minds and builders of the past but on the broken corpses of those we have crawled and stumbled over to reach this point.

Quote:

Originally posted by nemisis02

The sacrifice of one for five is idiotic. Better five die and one lives then to rob a person of their free will. The same is true with all things such as it is better 10 guilty men go free then convict an innocent man of crimes he did not commit. I have never bought into the kill one so many will live. There are too many people as it is, and if you kill the one so many live you are denying nature its true course. Civilization is built not on the great minds and builders of the past but on the broken corpses of those we have crawled and stumbled over to reach this point.

If you could go back in time and kill Hitler or Stalin or Mao, would you?

Hell no it is not morally permissible!! That would make you a killer.

I can not say that i would kill Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Julius Caesar, or any other that society has deemed morally or spiritually evil. IF not for people like them we would not have many of the things we have now. No other medium is so absolute in providing for humanities needs as war or conflict. Most medicines, technology, and foods were created or spurred on by the ever-present need to keep ones armies healthier, better equipped, and better fed so they could destroy the opposing armies. In fact were it not for war you would not be having this discussion on this forum. In the end many must die so that those that survive learn and prosper.

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Originally posted by EricLindros

...

If you could go back in time and kill Hitler or Stalin or Mao, would you?

So again, we come back to the hypothetical, kill one, and saves the lives of many, yet change the course of human history.

Now there is a discussion for a different thread all together as it could take many twists and turns...

What? The person being sacrificed is perfectly healthy? There is no question here, not legal, moral, nor ethical... The answer is "No", in fact it would still be "No" if the guy was terminally ill but those organs were healthy.

Organs should ONLY be harvested from those who are already dead, or cannot survive on their own without life support, and ONLY under the condition that they've previously consented to be organ donors.

I voted no for many reasons, but many because I'm not a killer and unless the situation was extremely different, I couldn't take someone's life.

I vote no, lets change the rules a little bit, how about if the healthy person is in jail for murder, or something horiffic? or how about what is going on in Japan or what happened in Russia at the nuke plant. How many lives are or were sacrificed for the good of the masses?

Quote:

Originally posted by nemesis

I can not say that i would kill Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Julius Caesar, or any other that society has deemed morally or spiritually evil. IF not for people like them we would not have many of the things we have now. No other medium is so absolute in providing for humanities needs as war or conflict. Most medicines, technology, and foods were created or spurred on by the ever-present need to keep ones armies healthier, better equipped, and better fed so they could destroy the opposing armies. In fact were it not for war you would not be having this discussion on this forum.

1. You can't say that because X was invented during Y, then X would not exist if Y had not happened. -- Things may have been invented during wartime, that in no way means they wouldn't have been invented without wars.

2. food wasn't created or domesticated because of armies - most of the advances in food domestication took place long before anything that could be recognized as states existed, and most advances in efficient food production (The Green Revolution) took place in the last 70 years, and it had little to do with the need to feed standing armies.)

Quote:

Originally posted by nemesis

In the end many must die so that those that survive learn and prosper.

So then what's wrong with one dying so that 5 may prosper?

Quote:

Originally posted by Demodad68

...

So again, we come back to the hypothetical, kill one, and saves the lives of many, yet change the course of human history.

Now there is a discussion for a different thread all together as it could take many twists and turns...

Yeah, but that hypothetical was just me being curious as to how far he was willing to take his stance.

Quote:

Originally posted by alaska123

or how about what is going on in Japan or what happened in Russia at the nuke plant. How many lives are or were sacrificed for the good of the masses?

I would even say that the results in the above hypothetical are better than the Japanese nuclear plant. There, you have government and TEPCO officials sending people into environments that are almost assuredly a death sentence, yet the benefits are not particularly tangible. The reactors do not pose an immediate deadly threat, and it's not clear that the workers have had much success in any of their efforts to stop the damage/meltdowns. So the people sending those workers into those areas - both the Government and TEPCO - are likely killing people for a benefit that is nebulous if it even exists at all.

The hypothetical above, however, give you an assured result of 5 people living for the death of 1. There is no ambiguity, you know that by not sacrificing that one guy, 5 others will die.

Interesting thought, anyway.

Quote:

Originally posted by bloodnuts

No that would be murder as opposed to natural death and how would one feel knowing that his heart was stolen from some healthy innocent dude who was murdered and sliced up to keep him alive.

Good point, I never thought of it from the recipients side...

Quote:

Originally posted by bloodnuts

No that would be murder as opposed to natural death and how would one feel knowing that his heart was stolen from some healthy innocent dude who was murdered and sliced up to keep him alive.

Ok, related question:

You're on a ship that is going down. There aren't enough life-boats.

Do you go down with the ship, or do you take one of the boats?


Personally, I take the boat, even though I know that in doing so I'm killing someone else, and I'm fine with that decision. The desire for self-preservation is incredibly strong, and rightly so.

So, likewise, if my choice is between my life and the life of someone I don't know who means nothing to me, I choose me pretty much every time, and I don't really feel bad doing it.