Should we kill healthy people for their organs?

[Martin Blank]

This is one of four questions that were posed by real-life philosopher David Bain, who lectures on philosophy at the University of Glasgow. I am posing the questions here as he phrased them in his BBC article, "Four philosophical questions to make your brain hurt," published on World Philosophy Day, 20 Nov 2008.

Suppose Bill is a healthy man without family or loved ones. Would it be ok painlessly to kill him if his organs would save five people, one of whom needs a heart, another a kidney, and so on? If not, why not?

Consider another case: you and six others are kidnapped, and the kidnapper somehow persuades you that if you shoot dead one of the other hostages, he will set the remaining five free, whereas if you do not, he will shoot all six. (Either way, he'll release you.)

If in this case you should kill one to save five, why not in the previous, organs case? If in this case too you have qualms, consider yet another: you're in the cab of a runaway tram and see five people tied to the track ahead. You have the option of sending the tram on to the track forking off to the left, on which only one person is tied. Surely you should send the tram left, killing one to save five.

But then why not kill Bill?

Please consider current forum policy if this topic in particular starts to drift.

[Arc Orion]

The examples ignore the fact that sick people are still more likely to die than a healthy person. Kill a person to harvest one's organs for five others, and you still have five sick people - they'll just be more likely to live than before. Now, if one could guarantee the survival of those receiving the transplants, the argument would hold more weight, though I would still oppose it unless such a situation asked for healthy volunteers to end their lives for others. I doubt that would get many takers, though.

[Deacon]

These are all incredibly different circumstances:

1) Presuming Bill has done nothing sufficiently wrong to warrant the involuntary termination of his life, we have no right to force him to give up his healthy life. On the flip side, we have no right to prevent him from volunteering to do this, either, IMHO. Bill may be an utter jackass and the organ recipients veritable saints, or he may be a doofus, while the organ recipients the brightest minds on earth, but it doesn't matter. As a human being, you have certain basic rights.

2) If this case were taken in a vacuum and human emotion were removed from the equation, the obvious answer would be to shoot the hostage. In reality, however, killing another person in a cold, calculated manner tends to have some serious effects on one's mental and emotional health. The psycho kidnapper cannot necessarily be trusted to keep his word. What if he then tells you to shoot one of the remaining four, as well, or he'll shoot them all? Do you keep going until only you and he are left? Also, why not take the opportunity to shoot the kidnapper instead, since you've got a gun and all? Maybe you haven't given up trying to reason with the dude or otherwise mess with his mind to get him to cut out the psycho shit. Maybe you turn the gun on yourself or otherwise refuse, knowing you may well die, as a gesture of nobility and self-sacrifice for the sake of the others, perhaps even changing the kidnapper's mind. It's a fucked up situation, but there aren't just two courses of action.

3) This is a situation entirely different from the first two, with a hurtling, run-away train and a snap decision to make. Obviously, that's the point of putting it last, to make you question the first two. This is why I find most philosophy professors and their bullshit questions to be tedious and smug and have little patience for them. They're not at all the same situation and cannot be treated as though they were interchangeable. If the option exists to stop the train, then obviously you do that. If that option doesn't exist, then you just go with your gut. What if the one person is your own mother, and the five people are all strangers--ooh, and they're wearing prisoners' uniforms from the local high-security federal prison for child rapists? Every situation is different.

[Martin Blank]

In the second case, presume that the kidnapper is, for some reason or other, completely honest and it will end up exactly as described. Either you shoot one, or he shoots all six. At that point, presuming that none of them have done anything wrong, do you (as the potential shooter) have a right to pick one out for death?

[Deacon]

Do I have a right to do so? That's kind of a silly question. People do things all the time without the right to do so. Does the psycho kidnapper have a right to propose such a ridiculous scenario? Has he watched too many Saw movies? No, nobody has the right to intentionally kill an innocent person. But that doesn't have much to do with the decision made, does it?

Regardless, like I said before, what you do in that situation will depend on how you size it up at the time, whether you think you can reason with the dude, your mindset and adrenaline level at the time, etc. It's why I hate these faux-high-minded hypotheticals, because it's like some baked pothead thinking he just blew your mind with some half-assed "philosophy" or an assertion about "reality" or whatever. The whole situation is just so ridiculously silly and is made more so every time the questioner attempts to herd you toward his amazing "gotcha" conclusion you can easily see coming from a mile away, and nothing useful has been accomplished.

[Martin Blank]

There's no attempt at a "gotcha" here. And the right to kill is exactly the question here. Some people could legitimately argue that, even in that situation, they could not pull the trigger on one even if it meant that the rest would die, because they don't have the right to make that kind of a choice.

[collegestudent22]

There's no attempt at a "gotcha" here.

Please, Martin. The situation is completely warped in the question. Anytime you take a question with multiple answers and boil it down to two polar opposites, there is a "gotcha" attempt. What if I ask which of the hostages is willing to die to save the others? What if I shoot at the killer instead, after promising that I would kill one? What if I tackle the killer (under the assumption that he tells me to choose one and he will kill that person) and attempt to hold him off so the others can escape? What if I tell him to kill me instead? There are many other options that aren't in the question.

[raptor9k]

1) Voluntarily, yes. Involuntarily, no.

2) Depends on who the hostages are, how I'm feeling at the time, whether the kidnapper is in the room with me, whether someone volunteers to take one for the team, etc, etc, etc...

3) Snap decision, I would probably try to minimize casualties unless I could identify the single person as a friend/family member and the 4 others as strangers. As cold as it sounds I have no vested interest in people I don't know. For all I know I could be running my own mother over to save two hookers, a professional athlete, and a politician (all of whom I consider worthless to society).

Questions like this rarely make sense. The main difference between the situations are that 2 and 3 are the direct results of your actions. In 1 you're simply being asked if you believe something to be true or false. If question 1 were rephrased so that you would strike the killing blow, I would imagine most people would give you 2 different answers. The situations are also presented as if extenuating circumstances mean nothing. Unfortunately things are rarely so cut and dry.

[Terrene]

In the second case, presume that the kidnapper is, for some reason or other, completely honest and it will end up exactly as described.

Um, yeah, I wouldn't be able to believe that even if the kidnapper was my own mother.

[adciv]

1) No. First off, no one is going to die right now. There are still medical advances being made and organs will become available in the future. Also, it would appear to discourage people being healthy. So, saying that bill has to die for the other five to survive is false.

2) I take the gun and shoot the kidnapper.

3) The one dies. Why? Because right now, regardless of what happens, either one person dies or five die. There is no latter point and there is no other possibility other than trying to make the train jump the track, which might be an option depending on the local terrain.

[Deacon]

There's no attempt at a "gotcha" here.

There absolutely is. Because the obvious answers to these different questions leads the questioner to gleefully say, "Yes, BUT! Why wouldn't you have to right to decide who dies in the first if you do in the third?" And so on. You know how the incredibly devoted Muslim Arab pilot-to-be my dad was taking on an instructional flight responded to my dad releasing the controls into his responsibility? He let the nose begin to dive and started chanting, "Allah wills it. Allah wills it." If your response that, "Some people could legitimately argue that, even in that situation, they could not pull the trigger on one even if it meant that the rest would die, because they don't have the right to make that kind of a choice" is accurate, then that's exactly what they're doing. Depending on your point of view, they're either cowards for refusing to make a decision or they're bravely insisting on hiding from the choice in front of them in order to preserve their incredible devotion to their college philosophy professor. How Darwin hasn't weeded these people out already, I don't know.

[collegestudent22]

I have a legitimate psychological question.

Why is it OK to kill old, suffering dogs, but not old, suffering people? Keep in mind, the people that do this say the dogs are "members of the family", and do it to "prevent suffering" on the dog's part.

[Terrene]

That's a stupid question because some people DO support euthanasia for humans.

The original question would be much more interesting if the person we want to kill for their organs was someone spending life in prison, or was on death row. Should murderers have rights to their own body parts?

[adciv]

It becomes a quest of "Are people being convicted for their organs or for their crimes?" Niven had a look at this in some of his books. Every crime, no matter how minor, carried the death penalty. It was carried out by breaking up the condemned for their organs. No one was ever aquited.

[collegestudent22]

That's a stupid question because some people DO support euthanasia for humans.

How does that make it a stupid question? Clearly the question is not pointed at them, but at those that decided that it is OK to euthanize animals, but not humans. Just because one side of the argument goes "Hey, why is that true?" and the other side has to answer because they think that it is OK to euthanize pets, but not humans, does not make it "stupid".