Debate Save others at the cost of a life?

Hypothetical - you're a doctor at the verge of making a breakthrough, genuine cure for some disease. This disease, however, effects only "sinful" people (thieves, wife beaters, and so on). The catch is, in order to synthesize the drug, you have to kill one "innocent" person.

Assume there is, say, one million people suffering from this disease.

Do you kill the innocent?

I most certainly do. Not only does logic dictate that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, there is no reason why these "bad" people could not attempt rehabilitation.

But now start upping the number of innocents you have to kill. Make it 10. A hundred. Five hundred. A thousand. How far do you go before you say no?

I myself must confess I'd stop at the 50-66% mark (500,000-666,666). Beyond that I feel we're losing too many beneficial members of society to make it worth the time, effort (and sacrifice) to attempt to rehabilitate, since I'm sure we wouldn't have a 100% success rate.

 

I think it would be worth the sacrifice. I myself would be honored to die for such a cause... though a disease like that would be an easy method of population control. However, I would probably stop around the 40% mark.

 

Sadly, once you put yourself in the position of deciding that you have the right to make such decisions as these, you will find yourself wearing the exact same shoes previously occupied by Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Saddam Hussein and any other mass murderer you could name.

This is precisely the line that such people must and have crossed in order to earn their respective places of historical infamy. Because once you've decided that you have the right, for the purpose of the "greater good" to take one innocent life, then it's no big deal to take two... or ten... or a hundred... or a million. As long as it's for whatever you've decided is the "greater good" (a definition which is itself likely to change as time goes on, to justify your course of action).

...Oh dear, now I've done it. I've started posting my philoso-political musings. Wonder how many enemies I'll make, and how quickly?

 

I will have to agree with Cylor's point. The fact that one sacrifices an innocent, or say millions, only with something they predder to call the "greater good".
I think of it just as a way to sleep comfy at night. It'd be hard for one to go on knowing that they ended an innocent life, no matter what the outcome. And even if I said to myself "its for the greater good" every night, I couldnt sleep knowing what I did.
And as for your main point, Neph, even if I justified myself, 500,000-666,666 isn't little numbers of people anymore.
I dissagre with the option to choose to kill an innocent, no matter what the cost.


- Kaiyon

 

I cannot comprehend the person who says they would sleep better if they let one million people die, as long as one person didn't. (Edit: I'm also perplexed how one kill would make another 999,999 any easier. End Edit.)

Nope. There are a lot more than 1 million people who do this sort of thing. However for whatever reason the disease seems random. One might think that'd prevent people from taking the chance, but then again STDs sure haven't slowed down bar pickups.

Nope. They'd be good people but they'd still have this disease.

Edit:

But we play God all the time. Just look at medical technology and agriculture. Those are most certainly not natural, and we've extended our lifespans well beyond the normal limit. Why is playing God bad only when it's an uncomfortable proposition?

 

Ok if this person is really innocent and godly as they say it would be no problem for them to give up their life for someone else..How do you think that person would feel if those people died just so he could live that happy peaceful life!That is stupid!!!Have any of ya'll even watched Armageddon!
That's a really good example..but if that person did die I would lose some sleep if I was a sinner but,think do people who (murder ,kill ,and torture)really
care???Don't think so!

 

"*snippy*"? Well, it wasn't my intention to come across that way...

Totally inappropriate comparison. If what you're talking about is vivisection, which is pretty much the only conclusion I can draw based on your original post, there is a pretty drastic difference between learning to treat wounds, developing medical drugs or diverting water to irrigate a field; and deliberately killing an otherwise healthy person for the sole purpose of scientific research (which is one of many things the Nazis did).

IMHO, there is a fundamental problem with the "numbers game" of viewing and treating human lives as mere statistics, and trying to decide which people are more (or less) expendable from a societal standpoint.

Let's turn this around. Suppose there was a disease which somehow only infected "bad" or "undesirable" people. And suppose a doctor or scientist approached you, and asked you to sacrifice your life for the sake of finding a cure.

What would your decision be, then?

 

-_- "snippy" is a form of "snip" which means I'm using that to represent your argument en mass. It's just to save space.

Pfft, no it's not. We breed and feed both plants and animals simply so that we can kill them, wrap them in plastic, and sell them in the grocery store. We manufacture wholly unnatural strains of vegetable, fruit, and animal which are more convenient for our purposes, such as seedless grapes, horses and dogs with all manner of specialized characteristics, turkeys so fat and stupid that they drown in heavy rain, etc. We split one atom in two, and fuse two atoms into one. We redirect rivers, create lakes, change natural geography, alter the environment. We launch technological devices into the heavens, we plant our flag on the Moon (that wasn't an archangel's footprint up there!), we generate artificial lightning so we can play with it or show it to our children, we make our own snow at will (ever seen a snow-making machine?), and we do a host of other things that used to be reserved for the assorted deities of the primitive world. Is this immoral? Only if it's done in a negligent manner, but playing God, in and of itself, is something we do quite regularly, and we should not be ashamed of it.

If you think it's wrong to play God, then don't be a hypocrite and go picket the nearest farm. Otherwise, shut up and get with the program.

(Edit: Who said we had to murder the innocent person? Why can't it be a volunteer? Also, regarding medicine, under normal "God" rules, a lot of people would be dead without our unnatural methods of curing diseases. Is playing God only distasteful when a person might die because of it? Because if you think even for a second we've never lost a person in the process of developing things to extend a life, well, I have some swampland in Florida to sell you. [/Edit])

Needs of many > Needs of few or one.

Are these people sick in enough quantities? Off I go then. It's certainly not my place to judge them or say that they can't contribute anything or be rehabilitated or whatever. Black people used to be considered undesirable too, after all. Plus I'd be remembered as a martyr. "Bad" people or not, they still have families and friends, and for all I know they might be good too. I would never be able to sleep at night comfortably knowing that I could have saved, say, a million people primarily, and who knows how many others would be affected by these deaths?

I really don't believe any of this "You can't play god!" claptrap. Why is it wrong to play God? Why don't we have the right? Can anyone explain? It's not enough to simply say "we don't have the right to play God", without explaining why not. It's not enough to simply say something is "wrong" without explaining what's wrong with it.

 

i wouldn't .... but then i don't really understand that question.

heres a similar question. i've been asking a lot of people about this.



so you're this person who is able to see the future. like it just pops out of nowhere. so suddenly, you had this vision of 2 people, one around 5 years old, and the other around 16 years old, getting killed at the exact same time. you can only save one being. which will you save?

 

Okay, first of all, let's get something straight. I have never once in this discussion made any reference to the act of "playing God". The person who did was Ciel, in an elaboration on my initial post. So you can redirect your indignation at that particular choice of words toward somebody else. 'Kay? Thanks.

The entire point of my previous reply was that human lives should be considered fundamentally more valuable than the lives of trees or cows or turkeys (and I'm a dedicated animal lover, I'll have you know). Such a thing should not be taken or thrown away lightly.

Moreover, you really, really have to be careful when citing and applying Mr. Spock's whole "needs of the many... outweigh... the needs of the few" philosophy. Because that is precisely the justification Adolf Hitler used in his campaign to exterminate the Jews, and Josef Stalin's rationalization for the millions of Russians he starved to death.

I'd interpreted the wording of your original post to imply that the "innocent" person would not be voluntarily laying down their life for the cause. If I misunderstood you, then I apologize for the confusion.

 

I could have sworn it was belief of divine manifest destiny of a specific sort of person he believed to be superior and aggressively classifying a specific sort of people as the enemy.

Wasn't it also Jesus' rationalization for self-sacrifice?

And on the other hand, wouldn't letting a million people die so one "better" person could live be the same as starving millions of Russians?

Let's alter the situation. You have one person who is practically a saint, and nobody can deny it. However, they've got a disease which will kill them unless you spend obscene amounts of resources on them, resources which could alternatively feed a million lesser people. Are you really going to let a million people die so one can live?

 

I think that what Cylor was saying was really more Hitler's attitude toward Russia, and not so much about the Jews. Still, either is pretty bad, right?

Ahh, this: Say "That sounds like something Hitler would say" and everyone supposedly sides against your opponent in an arguement.

In the first example, how is it that the innocent person has to die to save the others? And, wouldn't it be so, that the more people volunteer, the less likely any have to die?

And for both, wouldn't the so-called "saint" give his own life up willingly? I would think anyone as good as you're saying this person is would gladly give up their life to save *any* number of others, let alone as many as a million.

Or are we getting into something like with Ms. Schiavo?

 

I'm pretty sure Cylor meant Jews. I mean, he typed out Jews. And Russian is not quite the same word as Jew. It's a pretty big typo.

Super-magic-happy-aura. It's an ethics question, not a realism test.

No, or I would have said that.

Not necessarily; I did say "innocent" when I really meant more along the lines of Not-Evil-Or-Cruel-And-Essentially-Good-People-Who-Haven't-Really-Messed-Up. Furthermore, as a saint wouldn't kill themselves, it'd have to be you pushing the button. So, do you?

 

What I mean is, Hitler's attitude toward the Russians was essentially what Cylor said. What he said wasn't Hitler's attitude toward the Jews. A mistake on Cylor's part. Not necessarily a typo, but a misstatement, I think.

Oh, so basically, it's one of those "Don't ask why just answer the freaking question!" threads?

But you said "saint," in your last post. A saint is not the same as "Not-Evil-Or-Cruel-And-Essentially-Good-People-Who-Haven't-Really-Messed-Up."

Ahh, nitpicking.

Anyway, to the actual question. I'd really rather not kill anyone, if I could help it. However, since it's obviouisly one of those situations where I have no choice but to kill someone, I'd probably go ahead at first, but I doubt i could bring myself to kill that many people. You know how it is, "out of sight, out of mind," right?

Because I'm the one killing these innocent people, I wouldn't be able to bear doing it for very long, although I could probably easily let those others die, because I wouldn't have to actively kill them. I could put the whole issue out of my mind, and, to me, it would be as though nothing had happened.

 

But Hitler had long hated the Russians. He attacked because he viewed them as sub-human. It's the same in his sight as us killing chickens. It wasn't because of standard "human to human" logic.

Do I really have to make up some BS excuse? Besides, I explained: for whatever reason, "bad" people get sick and only the death of "good" person(s) can cure it. It doesn't matter WHAT it is, only that thats the only way to change it.

And this is why I won awards and you didn't.

Until the memorials start to be built, and weeping families grow furious with you for not doing anything. Nothing is truly away from you.

 

Well, it was his excuse, anyway. His justification.

Meh, it's unimportant, right? I don't feel like a long arguement over how it would work.

And meh, I don't care about not winning an award. Being here on BJP is more than enough of a priveledge to me.

I keep seeing parallels here with world history. WWII wouldn't have happened if England and France had done nothing, right? They were afraid of war. And because of it, millions upon millions of people died. If they had gone to war, they could have prevented all of that from happening.

And here, if I do nothing, I have angry families after me because I could have saved their loved ones and didn't. Honestly I don't know what I would do.

 

Splitting hairs. The point, which you seem to be missing, was that Hitler and Stalin both decided that certain groups of people were expendable, that it was acceptable to sacrifice their lives for the benefit or convenience of others. And that is precisely what you are proposing.

No, it wasn't. Jesus willingly laid down His life to balance the cosmic scales, to pay the spiritual debt incurred by the sins of the entire human race with the blood of God Himself, and then to defeat death itself. And that is something no mere mortal can do. It was such a unique circumstance that it really cannot be compared to anything else. Nice try, though.

...I suspect that's a topic nobody's going to want to discuss with me, ever again.

I believe you said yourself that you weren't talking about just killing one "better" person, but thousands or even millions. So you've already nullified your own argument and proven my point about the slippery slope of self-justification.

Hmmm... considering that was all in the topic's original post, why'd I even bother replying to it at all? :dizzy2:

Just where are we supposed to be going, here, anyway?

 

Er. No. I'm talking about simple numeric differences. Hitler was talking about divinity and how others were less than human. I'd love to see where I said anybody was less than human and was an affront to God, deserving to be extermin- oh never mind. If you can't see the fallacy in your argument now, I doubt you ever will.

I dunno. One innocent giving their life so that everyone else needn't suffer? Sounds exactly the same to me. It's merely on a bigger scale.

Go back and re-read. It initially started at one person. Then it asked if you'd do it again if you had to kill ten, or a hundred, etc.

 

It looks like you can't see the similarities here. Yes Hitler was talking about divinity and blah blah blah, but he basically was saying that there are people who are less than other people, and you're basically saying the same thing. You're asking us whether we would sacrifice the lives of "good" or "greater" people, to save the lives of "evil" or "lesser" people. Do you not see the parallel?

...And, you ignored the rest of my post. Anyway this whole "situation" you've dreamed up has so many parallels with World War II that are so clear to me it's almost baffling that you can't seem to see them.