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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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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