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Class Forums - Spring 2009

PHIL 110-007 - Figures in Western Philosophy

A Question of Morality

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Paul McMullen
Fledgling

16 Posts

Posted - Mar 25 2009 : 08:55:39 AM

Should we kill a completely healthy person for his or her organs?

Say we have a man without a family or loved ones. Would it be OK to kill him, painlessly, if his organs would save five people, one of whom needs a heart, another a kidney, and so on...? If not, why not?

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Joseph Haag
Moderator

172 Posts

Posted - Mar 25 2009 : 1:19:35 PM

With all due respect, that is an absolutely insane proposition.

First of all, you make the assumption that a man only has value if he has a family or loved ones, or that man who has a family has more value than one who doesn't.

Second, you assume that pain is the only negative consequence of death (I suspect that it's logically impossible to eliminate pain altogether when one is ending a person's life).

Third, you make the error that simply more human lives outweigh a single one. This numbers game--that depriving one person of his life to save five others is a pretty good deal--makes little sense to me.

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Ryan Gray
Fledgling

6 Posts

Posted - Mar 25 2009 : 5:46:12 PM

First and foremost, black market organ harvesting aside, organ donation is a voluntary proposition. For example, if I require a kidney transplant or a blood transfusion the first candidates for that donation will be members of my family since their genetics are closest to mine. However, my family is under no obligation (contractual, legal or otherwise) to provide me with the necessary donations. It's certainly within their emotional interests to help me out but their donation is not required.

Additionally, the donor is fully briefed on the procedural risks before going under the knife. Doctors are fully aware of the risks involved and until recently, live donors were a rare source because surgeons were unwilling to unduly risk the life of the donor. I think our current methodology is perfectly acceptable; if a donor is willing to provide without undue risk to his life then so be it. The lives of the healthy shouldn't be taken for the benefit of the sick especially if the healthy didn't have that choice to begin with. I am not willing to kill a man in the name of medicinal science.

I mention this because, as Joseph pointed out, your example revolves around the "social value" of an individual - the more value an individual has, the less likely he is to be bum rushed by the leprous masses for his healthy organs. If a person has no value (family and friends) and doesn't significantly contribute (emotionally or economically) he is, by your example, no longer a human member of our society but a resource we can 'harvest' and redistribute to the ill. You've made no indication whether donation is voluntary or compulsory. Before I or anyone else responds to your question I sincerely want you to clarify on these points because the eugenicists had a similar proposition; you've taken it a whole step further.

- human value: how do we decide what value a human has before we take Ol' Yeller out back?
- voluntary or compulsory: is he under legal coercion to give up the goods or is this a voluntary suicide-by-donation program?

I don't want to rush into a dystopian scenario of gangs of armed surgeons roaming the streets targeting the destitute and homeless and reselling their organs in a medical thrift store but that is the scenario you seem to have provided us with.

Edited by - Ryan Gray on Mar 25 2009 5:49:26 PM

Ryan Gray
Fledgling

6 Posts

Posted - Mar 25 2009 : 6:44:17 PM

I would like to add (and perhaps this is all I should have said) that its contemtible to justify butchery of a poorer man because "no-one will miss him." Butchery in general is cruel and inhumane but to literally view an entire segment of our population as a biological resource we can just slice-and-dice at our medical leisure is disgusting. Its also against any notion we have of a free and equitable society if a human individual is no longer guaranteed the right to life because he's no longer presents any definable social value.

If this is your view, you are off your rocker - either change your example or clarify your terms.

Joseph Haag
Moderator

172 Posts

Posted - Mar 25 2009 : 10:18:00 PM

Following the same logic, let's take this a step further:

In view of the fact that the death of some can under certain circumstances prevent the deaths of others, who would be in favor of obliterating the entire countries of Isreal and Palestine simply because their obliteration would prevent the pain and suffering that future warfare might someday cause? I certainly wouldn't.

This shows, I think, how dangerous this game of trading lives for lives really is.

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Kamrey Lucero
Fledgling

15 Posts

Posted - Mar 26 2009 : 10:45:40 AM

Murder in general, I believe, is wrong, and it remains wrong even if the victim has no family and is killed painlessly. Now, if people want to donate their organs when they die, sure: that's a great idea, but murdering people for their organs?

But would it make a difference if the person in question were willing to die? Suppose, for example, that the five people in Paul's example came to this man who has no family and asked him if he would be willing to die for them, and suppose that he agrees. How, if at all, would that change your opinions about Paul's question?

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Joseph Haag
Moderator

172 Posts

Posted - Mar 27 2009 : 10:59:22 AM

You raise a very good point, Kamrey, and I certainly agree that assisted suicide is very different from murder.

That being said, I suppose the question at hand now is whether the taking of a viable life is wrong in and of itself, or whether taking a life is wrong only if the person in question still wants it.

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Chris Sheridan
Fledgling

10 Posts

Posted - Mar 29 2009 : 11:08:29 AM

The way in which what we're talking about has been presented in this scenario really does seem rather outrageous: a man has to die for five others. But I also agree that it would be a different matter entirely if the man were willing to die for the others even though I've always been uncomfortable on the matter of assisted suicide. Also, why should this man have to die so his organs can be given to others when other organs might be available? This question simply does not make a great deal of sense. I think there would always be other options before it came to this.

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Paul McMullen
Fledgling

16 Posts

Posted - Mar 30 2009 : 11:55:06 AM

I wasn't proposing we do this, folks. I was just posing the question as a way of getting at a question of principle.

Now, Joseph, in your first post: your first objection makes perfect sense. Your second objection is understandable, but the person is under anesthesia, so pain is not a factor. I have a problem with your third objection. You are saying that people should never try to kill a person responsible for millions of deaths so that he would not kill millions more. Example: people should never have tried to kill Hitler because his life was worth more than all the Jews put together. This question can be raised about Saddam as well and indeed about any dictator who has been killing his own people.

Now since everyone seems agreed that this killing would be wrong if the man weren't willing to die to give his organs, what about the question that Kamrey has raised: what if he were willing to give his life in order to save these people? What then?

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Joseph Haag
Moderator

172 Posts

Posted - Mar 30 2009 : 3:19:11 PM

I see the point that you're making and I agree. I'm a quasi-pacifist of sorts, but I do believe in the just war theory (taking down Hitler, etc.)

But that's not what I was talking about. Wouldn't you agree there's a difference between a sociopathic killer who's going to take lives, and several people dying of natural causes who will die soon if someone doesn't give up his life to save them? There's quite a difference between the two. While taking out a killer makes sense, taking another guy's life to prevent people who are already dying from dying makes less sense.

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Paul McMullen
Fledgling

16 Posts

Posted - Mar 30 2009 : 8:28:20 PM

The entire purpose of modern medicine now is to keep people who are dying alive. We try to keep anyone alive who is dying from anything. We try almost anything to save them, which includes asking people to give up their organs. Sometimes this means that the person dies, but we do it anyway. And for now we ask them if they are willing to do it. But who says we won't change how we do it? Who says that we won't start just taking them?

I'm not saying I want this or condone it, but I'm putting it out there all the same.

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Joseph Haag
Moderator

172 Posts

Posted - Mar 31 2009 : 3:46:57 PM

But does it make sense logically to prevent death by any means, including killing people?

Is it not hypocritical to take an innocent man's life simply because saving another man's life is so important?

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Paul McMullen
Fledgling

16 Posts

Posted - Mar 31 2009 : 3:54:33 PM

Well, consider this slightly different example in relation to the same original question then: you and six others are kidnapped, and the kidnapper somehow persuades you that if you shoot dead one of the other hostages, he will set the remaining five free, whereas if you do not, he will shoot all six. (Either way, he'll release you.)

If in this case you should kill one to save five, why shouldn't you do the same thing in the previous case? If in this case too you have qualms, consider yet another: you're in the cab of a runaway tram and see five people tied to the track ahead. You have the option of sending the tram onto the track forking off to the left, on which only one person is tied. Surely you should send the tram to the left, killing one to save five.

So why shouldn't you kill the one man for his organs so as to save the other five?

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Joseph Haag
Moderator

172 Posts

Posted - Mar 31 2009 : 4:49:20 PM

I agree that keeping the number of dead people to a minimum is a good thing.

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Kamrey Lucero
Fledgling

15 Posts

Posted - Mar 31 2009 : 9:28:30 PM

But there is a major difference between the original scenario and the ones Paul has just posted, and that is that a decision to do something that results in at least one death is being forced. One must either do something that will result in one death or do something that will result in five. In the original scenario, morality can be brought in because free will is a factor; in the other scenarios, someone is going to die no matter what one does.

Another question, would it make a difference who these people were? Say in the first scenario that the potential "organ donor" is 18 years old, and the five people who would benefit from receiving his organs are all 89 years old. What then?

Or say, in the same scenario, that the person whose death could save the lives of the other five is 89 years old, and the other five people are all 7 years old. What then? Does morality change?

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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin

1374 Posts

Posted - Apr 01 2009 : 07:37:49 AM

I think Kamrey's onto something here, though it's not terribly easy to say what it is. I don't think myself that it's exactly free will. Let me try another angle on it.

Suppose that one takes really seriously the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." Doesn't it provide guidance in each of these three cases?

In the first case, killing can be avoided altogether by letting the five die. Their deaths, if due to organ failure, will be unfortunate, but they won't be the result of anyone's having killed them. The death of the potential "donor," on the other hand, would be the result of a killing even if he killed himself.
In the second case, the person who's being invited to kill one to save five won't be killing anyone if his kidnapper kills the five plus the one he could have killed to save the five. He's obeyed the commandment and can argue that it's hardly his job to see to it that other people obey the commandment.
In the third case, the person who can save one or save five won't be killing anyone either way. The only choice that this person faces is that of whether or not to do something that will minimize the destructiveness of the runaway tram.

My basic assumption here is this: killing someone and failing to save someone from death are not the same thing. There may well be many circumstances in which it's wrong to fail to save people from death if one can (and if one may), but if it is, it won't be because it's always wrong to kill.

So: can't one consistently maintain that it's never morally permissible to kill anyone even if doing so would save another -- or indeed many, many others -- from death? One might, of course, have doubts about the moral justifiability of the commandment itself, but if one didn't, couldn't it provide one with guidance? Is taking this commandment seriously sufficient all by itself to result in any contradictions?

Ellen Stewart
Apprentice

26 Posts

Posted - Apr 01 2009 : 8:15:12 PM

Again we�re back to these clever utilitarian problems. We discussed these in the small group I was in, focusing particularly on the trolley scenario. The simple answer is always to do that which causes the least harm. However there are problems with this even in the utilitarian view. We need more details about each situation.

For the 1 vs. 5 argument for example, a utilitarian would say you should sacrifice the one (though this is repellent to most people raised in our culture). However, if the one happens to be a brilliant scientist who cured cancer and is working (successfully) on a cure for AIDS, the utilitarian view suggests that the man who has cured cancer and will cure AIDS is the one we ought to save because keeping him alive will result in the optimal utility.

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Joseph Haag
Moderator

172 Posts

Posted - Apr 02 2009 : 2:53:44 PM

But what if the person who needs to die is a housewife with five kids who doesn't work, isn't doing any breakthrough research for cancer, and isn't contributing a whole lot to the economy? What about the value she has for raising her familiy and being a wife?

In other words, what constitutes a good human being? How much money he or she makes? What research he or she is doing? His or her relationships with friends and family?

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Kamrey Lucero
Fledgling

15 Posts

Posted - Apr 02 2009 : 5:13:22 PM

I definitely think she has worth -- especially to her five children. But -- and I'm not saying that this necessarily makes a difference -- who are the five people who need those organs? I don't think you can define a person's worth (at least not ethically), especially not by how much he or she contributes economically to society.

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Danny Worthen
Newcomer

4 Posts

Posted - Apr 24 2009 : 4:33:02 PM

I like the idea Paul, really do. Aside from the family and/or loved ones, i do believe the person shouldn't have a job either before deciding to kill him/her. I mean, if the person is giving back to our society we should go ahead and just let them go. But if someone doesn't have firends, loved ones, a job and just simply is a waste of oxygen, then I think we should bag him/her and then kill them and take their organs. It would put a wasteful life to use in possibly helping a dying child who actually has a future and people who care for it. And while we're on the subject Paul, you should watch the movie Repo. It totally goes along with this topic, (in a sense.)

Chris Sheridan
Fledgling

10 Posts

Posted - Apr 24 2009 : 4:39:02 PM

I am composed entirely of harvested organs. But they were taken from people who were already dead, which I think is the only situation in which it is permissible to take someone's organs.

k bye

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