John Harris suggested us that there could happened situations in witch the rational thing to do would be killing a healthy person and take his organs to transplants. We can sacrifice one person to save people. „The Survival Theory” shows two sick people who needs organ transplant for saving their lives. Patient Y needs a heart and patient Z needs lugs. If a recently deceased person were a donor, Y and Z can be saved. Y and Z ask: Why don’t we just kill a suitable donor?
The medical procedures to save Y and Z are available, and in other medical treatments, a doctor’s failure to provide the service would be regarded as equivalent to killing the two patients.
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So, by not killing an innocent “donor” for the necessary heart and lungs, the doctor chooses to kill Y and Z. Harris gives two objections to killing one person to save two people. First, a doctor’s choice of whom to kill will be arbitrary.
It is simply not fair to the innocent person who is killed.
Author also added that it will create „terror and distress to the victims, the witnesses, and society generally. ” But we can set up a rule that removes these problems, and then the benefits will outweigh the „costs. ” The Survival Lottery says: Put everyone at equal risk of being sacrificed (for instance: use a computer to select someone at random from the population of compatible organ donors) and make sure that everyone becomes aware that their own chances of living are increased by this plan.
Organ donation will no longer depend on the few people who become organ donors, and the many people who now die- can live. Those who object to being chosen in the lottery would be classified as murderers. Inter-planetary travel example: If we were able to observe this process in practice (on another planet), how could we object to it? Our current procedure would seem crueler to them than theirs does to us. He showed objections to the Lottery: -It reduces our security. -We should not „play God. ” Killing is worse than letting die, so it’s better to let Y and Z die. -It makes too high a demand on us. We don’t have to be „saints” and give up our lives when we want to live. For example, we have the right to self-defense. -The lottery will create too much terror and distress. -Third parties cannot decide who to save and who to kill, so only those who „are going to die” soon should be put into the lottery. I like all the arguments for and against the Survival Lottery, but I would have to say I would be against a lottery like this one.
I understand that those that are dying and need organ transplants are no less deserving of life than somebody completely healthy, but does that mean we should sacrifice a healthy person’s life so that a couple of people with bad hearts and lungs can live? What happens if the organs fail in those people, and it was a waste to sacrifice the innocent person. If a sick person is no less deserving of life than healthy person, who is to say that the healthy person is less deserving of life than the sick person? I think that is what the Lottery is essentially saying.
Of course, one person might save two lives, but then aren’t we regarding that one healthy person as less deserving of life than the sick people? What about the dying people who will die regardless of a transplant? Those with cancer, can not receive a new heart and be cured. Is it really fair to save only the dying who need transplants? In this way we are saying that those who are dying and cannot be saved by a transplant are less deserving of life than those who are dying and can be saved by a transplant. So only a select number of dying people will be saved, and the rest will be forced to die. It seems a bit unfair to me.