crouching_sin | [Anon] [Text]

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[Anon] [Text]

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.

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Naturally it's hypothetical, since I don't see a situation like this cropping up...ever, really. The odds of the man being a perfect match for all five of those patients is astronomically low.

That's right. Due to my reasoning, the thought of using this man's organs wouldn't even cross my mind. There are plenty of legal methods of obtaining organs, and I imagine any real doctor—or student—would have looked into various options first depending on how long the patients have been in his or her care.

I will concede to the non-magic condition, for the sake of this conversation at least.

Of course. This question is usually posed to students to introduce them to the idea of utilitarianism. It's also good for getting them to start arguing, so there's that.

Ah, that's the concept of maximizing happiness and minimizing pain, correct? I certainly danced around the core question in that case, didn't I? Let me think about it that way.

I understand that others may feel remorseful for not being able to save the patients by normal means or would go to extreme lengths to maximize the amount of lives saved, but I tend not to put my personal feelings into my work, as you could likely guess. And I'm certainly not going to put my license and reputation at stake by murdering a perfectly healthy patient for the sake of saving more lives, especially right in the middle of my place of work.

That's fair. It's certainly a situation where one would have to think, but most people wouldn't do it. The ones that would are, as you've guessed, the ones who tend to get caught and have their licenses stripped and locked away.

But it's an interesting thought experiment at the very least.

I would have no pity for those who went through with it and ended up actually surprised by the outcome. They already put too much thought into it by even considering it as an option in the first place, and yet lacked foresight about what could happen after they completed their actions.

But I do agree, this has been interesting. I've seen several thought experiments on the network in my time here, but none so outright morbid as this one. I bet you've struck a nerve with some network members.

[Apparently the one about drowning someone wasn't morbid enough. We need to be stealing organs for it to get morbid.]

Apparently I have. I've gotten several people asking me what I'm even thinking. I'm thinking of philosophy, obviously.

And you decided to go this route as opposed to something a little more digestible for the network? Or were you hoping for strong reactions?

I'm not judging you by the way, I think it's an interesting angle.

Strong reactions tell you more about a person than weak ones do. It's interesting to see how people phrase things, since a few words change everything.

I doubt you're going to get any weak reactions to a question like that, so...nice choice.

Have you even gotten any particularly interesting responses aside from the oh-so predictable "of course not how would you even suggest such a thing"? And mine of course, I suppose.

[He can of course see the responses but he's curious to know this person's particular favorites. He'd like to learn a little more about the person behind the question.]

Apparently someone had this happen where they're from, which is interesting.

And someone else said that this kind of thing doesn't exist where they're from. Their excitement is amusing.

They were faced with the option of killing one person to save another? I highly doubt it was the exact same situation as the one you described, after all.

As for the second person...what did they mean by that?

My guess is that no, other people were killed to keep people healthy? I didn't exactly quiz him on it.

I think it's more that medical science hasn't gotten to that point there.

Hm, well that's interesting indeed. On both counts, though the second is unfortunately barbaric. It's very difficult to imagine this level of science not being present somewhere.

[He's definitely glad he didn't grow up in that person's world.]

I guess I'll have to thank you for the amusing discussion today. I needed a decent break from my shift right about now.

It surely hasn't been at this level for all time, though. And I'm certain that this level of technology is still barbaric to someone. Surely there's someone here from a more advanced society... though I've yet to find them.

And you're welcome. I enjoy these sorts of discussions.

[Haha, about that...]

Well, you wouldn't be wrong with that assumption. I wouldn't necessarily call this world's technology barbaric, but it's certainly far behind my own world's.

It's somewhat behind mine as well. At least in some areas.

Where would you say it falls short, then?

It doesn't seem to have the same level of industrial technology. Certainly not in agriculture, or else I imagine there would be more people around and more cities.

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