This week we have a followup up to our scenario from last week! Read carefully, as only one detail has changed:
You are a very skilled doctor with five dying patients, each of whom needs a different organ in order to live. Unfortunately, there are no organs available to perform any of the transplants. It just so happens that you have a sixth dying patient, suffering from a fatal illness, who will die sooner than the other five if not treated. If this sixth patient dies, you will be able to use his organs to save the five other patients. However, you have a medicine you can give to this sixth patient that will cure his illness and he won’t die. This sixth patient is also a convicted murderer and child molester. Would you:
I answered the same as last time. The 6th must die for the greater good of all the others. His past is of no concern.
Thanks for the input Megan. I’m curious how you would respond to Butch’s comment from last week where he essentially argued that a society that could sacrifice people for the greater good would be a worse overall place and not as good. For example, people might never go to the doctor for the fear that their organs would be harvested to save others.
I’m pretty sure as a pre-requisite for being a doctor you have to take an oath that says you shall DO NO HARM. You are killing the sixth man, and that is unacceptable. It is not the job of the physician to be judge, jury, and executioner.
Thanks for the feedback, Trevor. One thing to keep in mind when doing philosophy us that we often talk in hypotheticals. While its true doctors do pledge to do no harm, we might ask ourselves to step back and ask if that really is the way things should be. It might very well turn out that it is, but it can never hurt to consider the issue by thinking about.
And even now there are some blurry lines to that oath. For example, if someone volunteers to donate none marrow or one of their organs to a relative in need, removing that literally does unnecessary harm to the donor. So it’s important to consider scenarios like this because they may help clarify what we mean by do no harm.