Ok....In France there is a train called the TVG. This was a very fast train. It would take 2 miles for it to stop. Now...There is a fork in this railroad about 1 mile up the track. These 2 tracks I will label as Track A and Track B. Now the train is aimed for track A. Track B is just a place where they would detour the train if track A was down. Now here is the philosophy part... There are 10 kids on Track A and there is 1 kid on Track B...They could not jump off of the track because there is a 10000 ft canyon that the railroad tracks are ontop of. You just so happen to be right next to the Rail-switch from Track A to Track B. What do you do? Do you switch it from track A to Track B, Thus killing the child on that track? Or do you keep in on Track A? (You have 5 seconds to decide so you can't call your mom on the cell phone and ask for her advice) You do not know any of these kids at all. Who do you kill? You are killing the 10 kids if you don't do anything yet you are still killing the one kid if you do. Which one do you choose?
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Ok...Now that you have a firm belief in your mind what you'd do...Let me give you this follow-up example...
You work in a hospital that is a Utilitarianistic Hospital (which means that they will save more lives because they believe that quantity counts and not quality) that has 10 sick childern that need all need some different type of body part... You know, one needs a kidney the other needs a liver, heart and so on and so forth. The only way these kids are staying alive is by machines and such. Now one day, The head of your hospital tells you that it is to expensive to keep these kids alive and they are pulling the funds. Thus all the children will die. So you have to get together all of the parents and tell them that their kid has one day to live. Now before you do this you look out the window, pondering what you would say, when you see Julie. Julie is a little girl who is playing hop-scotch infront of the emegancy room. Now there is something really unique about Julie...She has very alterable body parts. In other words, you could place her kidney into a dolphine and make it work. She had been tested on by doctors for a while so that they could get to know what she was like and how she could be like this. Now you say to yourself: What if we could put all of her body parts into these 10 kids that are going to die?
Now you decide to save these 10 kids and take Julie up to the Morge and cut her up and take the parts. Did you just murder someone? And was it the right thing to do? I'll bet most of you answered no (those of you that didn't, see if you contradicted yourself in my first example with the train). If you would save the 10 kids on the railroad tracks in example 1 than you would by logical conclusion you would kill Julie and take her parts to save the others.
You can save someone in each situation, but at the same time you lose one. You have to decide, which one.
-Next Time--Who's Who and Who Should Go?
