Save the drowning child?

[iamaelephant]

Here is a more interesting one.

5 people are in hospital with organ failures, each of them a different organ. All five of them will certainly die within the hour if organs can't be found. There are skilled surgeons on call and healthy organs would translate to (for the sake of argument) a 100% chance of a successful transplant. A healthy middle-aged man walks into the hospital to pay an old bill from last week. His organs are perfect. Assuming no legal ramifications, is it ok to kill him and harvest his organs to save five people? Why / why not?

 

[blackdogdeek]

here's a better twist on the first one:

to save the child you have to leave your 1 year old toddler on the bank of the pond. there are no other people around and the area does not look too dangerous.

 

[MikeyLSU]

#1 pretty easy for me, save the kid, the only thing certain at that point in time is that the kid is drowning and needs your help...everything else is speculation that you could sell a coat, and that it would actually save lives.

#2 was very difficult for me. I don't think I could pull the lever. I can't force someone else to sacrifice their lives for other people no matter how the numbers stack up.

#3 Likely, I would do nothing, but that was not a choice. In the choices I have, I would pick to use the money to save the person right there.

 

[Fritzo]

[green goblin]?This is why only fools are heroes, because you never know when some lunatic will come along with a sadistic choice: let die the woman you love?or?suffer the little children!? [/green goblin]

 

[Fulcrum]

Originally posted by: iamaelephant
Here is a more interesting one.

5 people are in hospital with organ failures, each of them a different organ. All five of them will certainly die within the hour if organs can't be found. There are skilled surgeons on call and healthy organs would translate to (for the sake of argument) a 100% chance of a successful transplant. A healthy middle-aged man walks into the hospital to pay an old bill from last week. His organs are perfect. Assuming no legal ramifications, is it ok to kill him and harvest his organs to save five people? Why / why not?

Sorry, this one is just as lame as the other ones. Sure, you can employ all kinds of philosophical arguments that will try to point otherwise, but a murderous act of this kind is wrong. Period. End of story. Having five people die of a preexisting cause is sad, but saving them will never justify murder. It also begs the question of why is this middle aged man the only possible source of salvation for these five people?

 

[dullard]

People haven't mentioned the obvious consequences yet. Excelsior came close, but didn't quite get there.

So You ship over $5000 and save 100 starving kids' lives. Then what? They have 5 kids each, for whom there isn't enough food either. Now you have 500 kids who will die if you don't send $25,000. So you send the $25,000. 25 years later they each have kids and now you have 2,500 starving kids. You don't have $125,000 to save them, so your action half a century ago KILLED 2,500 kids.

I'd rather let 100 die than 2,500. Don't send over the money for any reason at all until those countries fix themselves to a point where your money helps instead of aggrivates the problem.

Now you have a much more simple choice to make. Save the drowning child or save your jacket. The reward and fame enough would make saving the child a better option (forgetting the moral and ethical choices for now).

 

[blackllotus]

Originally posted by: sandorski
Paris Hilton is likely reading the same book now and is in awe of it!

aka, these 3 "dilemmas" suck!

1) I can't remove the jacket? [throws it to the ground and gives the OP a cold hard stare]
2) 10 Workers will die? I'm curious how I'm getting all this info from in the first place, but even assuming I know it all the only thing I know for sure would be that the 10 Workers would be at risk, not that they would die.
3) This one doesn't suck as bad, but why do these 100 kids keep showing up as somehow related to these dilemmas?

Here's what I would do: Take off the jacket, save the drowning child, jump out of the pool and switch the Train track hoping the Workers jump out of the way in time, goto the Hospital and ask if the kid will get his operation, depending on the answer I'll worry about whether I'll pay or not then. I'll accomplish all that and not once think of 100 children in some far off place.

You're missing the point of the question

 

[habib89]

save the kid

kill the tunnel workers

save the kid

i dont' get the instant gratification with donating the money to save the ethopian kids... saving one kid that i know will survive makes me feel better than providing some food for ethopian kids who might die of something else anyway...

 

[cjgallen]

Save the cheerleader.

 

[Superrock]

You need a "do nothing" option for the third question

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: blackllotus

Originally posted by: sandorski
Paris Hilton is likely reading the same book now and is in awe of it!

aka, these 3 "dilemmas" suck!

1) I can't remove the jacket? [throws it to the ground and gives the OP a cold hard stare]
2) 10 Workers will die? I'm curious how I'm getting all this info from in the first place, but even assuming I know it all the only thing I know for sure would be that the 10 Workers would be at risk, not that they would die.
3) This one doesn't suck as bad, but why do these 100 kids keep showing up as somehow related to these dilemmas?

Here's what I would do: Take off the jacket, save the drowning child, jump out of the pool and switch the Train track hoping the Workers jump out of the way in time, goto the Hospital and ask if the kid will get his operation, depending on the answer I'll worry about whether I'll pay or not then. I'll accomplish all that and not once think of 100 children in some far off place.

You're missing the point of the question

I'm sure I am, but that doesn't mean that the questions still don't suck.

Check out Eits post with the link for some good questions.

 

[Geocentricity]

1) let kid drown, not sell jacket, continue my life helping people here and there
2) if I know that the workers have life insurance, I'd pull the lever and have them killed. Save more lives & allow the loved ones collect more life insurance (if they have the death on the job clause)
3) use the money elsewhere - immediate relief of that 1 boy's suffering does not eliminate the fact that he has a high probability of dying way before half of the male population's life expectancy. Saving 100 Ethiopian kids from what? Disease? Hunger? Violence related death?

If you were stuck in a cave with 10 kids and only had enough water and food to keep 1 kid alive until rescue came, would do feed that 1 kid or split it 10 ways and have all perish?

 

[Captante]

(1) Save the drowning child

(2) Pull the switch

(3) Pay for the surgery