Imagine that you are a doctor. At the moment, you are administering a routine ph
ID: 3469740 • Letter: I
Question
Imagine that you are a doctor. At the moment, you are administering a routine physical examination, and the patient is in excellent health. Your mind, however, is really on more troubling matters; there are five patients in the critical care wing of the clinic who are desperately in need of organ transplants. Acceptable donors have not been found, and these particular patients are now critical; they do not have much time. As you are completing the physical exam of the healthy patient, it occurs to you that you do have a certain choice. It would be possible for you to administer a shot to this patient that would cause him to fall asleep and then die painlessly. (You could tell him it is a flu shot or some similar standard precaution). Because you are very clever, you could concoct an injection that would accomplish this task without anyone being able to discover the true cause of death. It would be possible to take various organs out of this healthy patient and redistribute them into the five critical patients as needed. The patient’s organs would be excellent matches for the five needy patients (so the likelihood of successful transplants is very high); the patient has no friends or family to speak of, as he just moved here from the coast “to begin again” as he says (so the unhappiness generated by his death would not be felt by others); each of the five needy patients has children and other family members and friends (so the unhappiness generated by the death of each would be felt by many people). So, even if some of the transplants were unsuccessful, much more happiness would be produced than would be the case if you refrained from killing the healthy patient.
What would you do, and why? Which philosopher(s) from this week do you think would agree with you, and why? Which philosopher(s) from this week do you think would disagree with you, and why?
THESE ARE THE PHILSOPHERS
Plato, Why Should I Be Moral? Gyges’ Ring and Socrates’ Dilemma (pp. 455-460) James Rachels, Morality Is Not Relative
Aristotle, The Ethics of Virtue
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence, and Morality
Explanation / Answer
I will not kill the Healthier patient for sake of getting his organs and transplanting his organs in other five critical patients.From philosophical point of view, I do not have any rights to kill a person because I have not given the life to him. There is only one supreme power who is creator and destroyer of our lives and he is God. It is morally not correct to kill a innocent person just because of the fact that his or her organs can be utilized somewhere else.
According to me The Aristotle’s view will be agreeing to this stand of mine. According to Aristotle Happiness is the highest good and the end at which all our activities ultimately aim. All our activities aim at some end, though most of these ends are means toward other ends. Aristotle defines the supreme good as an activity of the rational soul in accordance with virtue. Virtue for the Greeks is equivalent to excellence. A virtuous person is someone who performs the distinctive activity of being human well.Hence being a doctor I will have to perform the duties which will be beneficial for mankind. My duty is to save the lives not to take the lives.Hence killing the healthier patient is against the morality.
Likewise I think Plato’s view will not agreeing to me. According to Plato the practical consideration that conflicts with morality is almost always one’s rational self-interest. While it is often in one’s rational self-interest to behave morally, upholding one’s moral values also frequently demands that one (to some degree) sacrifices the pursuit of one’s self-interests.
To illustrate Plato’s Concept, Let us consider the act of Killing the healthier Patient. It is almost universally regarded as wrong to kill someone exclusively for one’s own benefit. From a moral standpoint, killing is (generally) impermissible, and from a prudential standpoint, killing is often clearly against one’s self-interest. Moreover I , might decide not to kill the healthier patient because the Hospital might have a state-of-the-art security system. The chances of being apprehended and suffering legal punishments (e.g., a fine, time in jail) would be too great to risk. Hence, trying to kill the patient would not be in my rational self-interest. In this case, self-interested considerations and moral considerations converge on the same conclusion: I shall not attempt to kill the patient..
But suppose that the chances of getting caught during this killing are extremely low (perhaps less than 1%) and that the patient is healthy and after killing his organs can be transplanted to the bodies of other five critical patients.In this scenario, the risk is minimal, and the payoff is very high. Essentially, as the risk of being caught shrinks or the payoff increases, the motive of killing the patient aligns more closely with what is inmy rational self-interest. Thus, in this second case, it may be in one’s rational self-interest kill the patient.