[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

[crouching_sin]

Personally? If we're assuming that the surgeon wouldn't get caught, then I'd say that while it's morally wrong according to most standards and certainly a breech of his oath, the surgeon wouldn't be wrong to do it if it were to save the lives of the other people.

More realistically though, it's unlikely to ever work, unless everything went perfectly. And there's definitely the risk that the organs would go bad by the time he got to the fifth patient anyway, since he's not likely to want other people around to help him. People talk, after all.

[conquersworlds]

How isn't that wrong, in your opinion? Because it spares five instead of one?

[crouching_sin]

Exactly. Isn't saving lives the job of a doctor?

[conquersworlds]

...Do you want to point out where murder fits into the job description as well or just try again? Your choice.

[crouching_sin]

Is letting people die without doing everything you can to help them better than murder?

[conquersworlds]

...I think the answer most people would give here is something like "Yes, because then you don't have a direct hand in the death."

[crouching_sin]

Most people are squeamish.

[conquersworlds]

Or they just have different priorities.

I don't think it really matters whether one is better or not, personally.

[crouching_sin]

To be honest, I don't really think it does, either. It's just something people tend to tell themselves to make themselves feel better about it.

[conquersworlds]

There's not much point in doing that, though - if people need to die then so be it.

[crouching_sin]

Most people don't seem to like thinking of it that way.

[conquersworlds]

Most people don't have experience with it.

I still think there's too much wrong with the original question for it to pretend to be worthy of discussion, even as a thought experiment - but I'm curious about what sort of answers you've gotten.

[crouching_sin]

Most people seem to be giving an immediate reaction of 'no'. Other people have said 'no', but because of more intelligent reasons like 'because you'd lose your license'. No one yet has said 'yes' - which is fair, since this is a rather extreme example of utilitarianism.