[Anon] [Text]

[crouching_sin]

Here's a question for you all. It's something that I read a while back, and I'm interested in your answers. Anonymous is fine, if you want.

There are five patients in a hospital. All of them are dying due to complications with various organs. All of them will die within the next day or so if they don't get an organ transplant. Magic won't save any of them, incidentally, if you were hoping to use that.

A young backpacker comes into the hospital or a checkup. He has no relatives, and he is in excellent health. As it happens, you, the surgeon on duty, notice that he is a perfect match for all five of the patients.

Assuming the backpacker does not give consent, is it morally permissible to cut him up and transfer the organs to the other patients? These are not organs that the backpacker can live without, so he'll die if you do.

I'm interested to hear what you think.

Comments

[anon text forever]

[crouching_sin]

Doctors need to save all the lives they can though, right? There's no other way to save these people. Should he let them die and have killed five people rather than one?

[presentyourbadge]

There's a difference between doing what's right and making decisions that aren't yours to make.

[crouching_sin]

So you should let them die, then? That doesn't sound right.

[presentyourbadge]

It doesn't really matter. You can't pick and choose which lives are more important than others. Maybe it's not fair, but what's fair isn't always what's right.

[crouching_sin]

Trust me, I understand that all too well.

But why can't you? Why shouldn't fair and right be the same thing?

[presentyourbadge]

Well, what exactly IS fair, and what exactly IS right? You end up just arguing semantics. You have to do the things that seem fair or right to you, based on how you personally interpret those things. And sometimes you do things that aren't fair to you but are right for others, and that's just how it goes. It all depends on the things you value most, I guess.

[crouching_sin]

If that's the case, then how can society interpret fair or right at all? If I don't consider something a crime but society does, who's to say that they're right but I'm wrong?

[presentyourbadge]

That's what you get for living in a structured society; you need to follow the rules the majority makes for you. Maybe you're not wrong in your own eyes, but you'll always been wrong in the eyes of some.

Of course, there are SOME things -- say, murdering someone -- that shouldn't be done regardless. But that's just common sense!

[crouching_sin]

Sometimes people need to die to save other people. You can't say for certain that you know what should or shouldn't be done without knowing what the cost of not doing it is.