Ethical Ruminations

Week two questions at hand. Here we go! I would be interested to know what your response would be ...

Several years ago Phillipa Foot drew attention to an extraordinarily interesting problem:

Suppose you are the driver of a trolley whose brakes have just failed. On the track ahead of you are five people; the banks are so steep that they will not be able to get off the track in time. The track has a spur leading off to the right, and you can turn the trolley onto it. Unfortunately, there is one person on the right-hand track. You can turn the trolley, killing the one; or you can refrain from turning the trolley, killing the five.

Question:

1. Is it morally permissible for you to turn the trolley? Why? Explain.

A.

I am not sure what my response would be. In my head would be running the questions: How old are the people at stake? Are there children involved? Aged persons? Would I run more risk to the people on my trolley by taking the right turn which could potentially kill more than the five or one persons ahead of me? Are there potentially more people ahead of me that I would kill before I could get the trolley stopped, either direction? Does the track veering to the right loop back around, thus costing me six lives instead of five?

In reality I would have perhaps seconds, if not less, to run through the scenarios. Of course, my conscious would go for the situation that would be the least deadly. Honestly, I am not sure what I would actually do because I am not experiencing all of the variables. My right turn could be so sharp at the speed I am going down the hill that I could cost not only the life of the person ahead of me, but potentially everyone on board. Heading straight could potentially put me in the path of even more people thus costing me my passengers plus five ahead of me.

Argh! I am not sure... Perhaps I would head straight in the hopes that the hill levels off and I could save all of my passengers. If the turn were not very sharp, I would take the turn knowing it was a safe turning speed for as fast as I were traveling.

I know this doesn't provide a concrete answer to the question. But like I said, I am not experiencing all of the variables and thus cannot make a correct assessment of the situation.

Now consider this:

You are a great transplant surgeon. Five of your patients need new parts - one needs a new heart, the others need, respectively, liver, stomach, spleen, and spinal cord - but all are of the same, relatively rare, blood-type. By chance, you learn of a healthy specimen with that very blood-type. You can take the healthy specimen's parts, killing him, and install them in your patients, saving them. Or you can refrain from taking the healthy specimen's parts, letting your patient's die.

Questions

2. Is there a moral difference between the two cases? Explain.

A. Situation 1 is an accident, an unforeseen failure of the brakes. Situation 2 is consciously taking a live to save others. I believe Situation 2 would be a failure of the moral compass to take one persons life to give to others. The only way I could see pulling the plug on someone in Situation 2 is if the healthy specimin were on life support with no hope of having a quality of life (loss of brain function). I would speak with the family and hope they saw the benefit of giving up one to save many. But I am not sure I could purposely sacrifice one to give to others.

3. What are the distinction between the two? Explain

A. Like I mentioned earlier, one is an accident and the other is not. There are times when you are subject to the nature of the beast, and there are other times when you can consciously choose with time to ponder on the situation.

4. Why is it that you may turn that trolley to save five, but may not cut up one healthy specimen to save five lives? Explain.

A. This question reminds me of Seven Pounds. He took five or six lives, and then turned around and essentially "gave back" those lives through unethical use of a federal ID and then suicide. Was what he did an ethical way to repay his "debt"?

Thinking about the organs at hand, I wonder if taking the whole organ is necessary. One can donate part of a liver and stomach; You don't really need a spleen; And a spinal cord transplant is not even possible right now. There has been transplantation of embryonic spinal cord, but that's it.

Turning, or not turning, the trolley is an "accident." Purposely sacrificing someone is considered murder in the justice system (unless the previous situation were true, see A2). I would still struggle living with myself no matter the situation, however the justice system looks at the outcomes differently.

Do I worry about me? Yes. Do I worry about my family, as a result? Yes. Whether it's right or not, I would also calculate into the risk my public appearance. Both would certainly get media attention and affect me for the rest of my life.

5. Does the solution to the trolley problem lie somewhere in the theory of rights, utility, justice, consequences, virtues, good will, egoism...

A. I believe the solution, or lack thereof, does lie in the afore mentioned words. Right now I cannot say to what extent because I have not completed all of my reading. But I hope to have an answer by the end of this course :)

Foot, P. (1978). The problem of abortion and the doctrine of the double effect. Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy, 19.