what would you do? a question of ethics

Originally posted by radioactive69
Must be the secret ingredient that gives it that distinctive flavour you like. Always wondered why it had that weak yellow colour. Enjoy my friend

Like most bog standard lagers it's pretty much the same colour going in as going out. 😵

Speaking of which... it's Saturday night 7.30 pm...

Originally posted by FMF
Like most bog standard lagers it's pretty much the same colour going in as going out. 😵

Speaking of which... it's Saturday night 7.30 pm...

Lucky you. I'm on call and have to stay sober. At least I can sit here and gamble my .....backside off.

What ever I might have done in that situation, it would be enormous amount of guilt on my shoulders and soul and heart.

I think I would probably come to hate the survivors at some point...

So I would let all get killed (I am not their guiding and guarding angel) , and afterwards I will write a book about it.

Situations in which the issue of which one to save when you can’t save all of them arise more often than one might think in the medical profession, especially where transplantation is involved. Generally speaking, there are more hopeful recipients waiting for organs than there are suitable organs. It never happens, at least in Europe it should never happen, that a single doctor makes a determination which recipient gets which organ (i.e., that a single doctor saves patient A and lets patients B and C die).

A complicated decision procedure has been agreed to and implemented internationally. The decision procedure involves many people at several levels, both technical and administrative, and follows a clearly defined protocol. The reasons are manifold, but include the exclusion of personal feelings or prejudices from influencing the result, such as preferring one’s friend or family member to get the next organ, which would be considered unethical. Any doctor found to be attempting to influence the decision procedure for personal reasons would be immediately removed from the loop and probably subjected to disciplinary measures.

The decision procedure removes any single doctor from bearing sole responsibility for determining that person A rather than persons B or C shall receive a given organ, for the obvious reason that this is such a great burden to have to bear and that any single person, no matter noble and well-intentioned, may make mistakes. The decision procedure involves winnowing in stages to narrow the range of candidates as far as possible. The decision procedure concentrates on ‘technical’ issues, such as the following: donor compatibility (much more must match than merely blood type); prognosis for the recipient (a patient who is waiting for a heart only and who is otherwise in generally robust health has a better chance of surviving the operation and so will be preferred over another who needs both a heart and a liver and for whom there is no donor liver available, for example); distance the organ must be transported to reach the recipient (there is a narrow window of opportunity for utilizing organs removed from brain-dead donors), and so on. Ideally, these ‘technical’ matters and this winnowing process together yield a single recipient who is most suited to receive a given organ, thereby obviating the burden of deciding that person A lives and persons B and C die (unless, of course, another suitable organ turns up, which is always possible). But this ideal result is not guaranteed and it must sometimes actually come down to the question ‘does person A or person B get this donor heart tonight, because we cannot wait any longer with the decision?’ I can assure you, no doctor takes such a decision lightly or would feel comfortable taking it alone. Hence, responsibility gets partitioned in small bits over many stages and the final decision (A or B) is taken in consultation.

The decision procedure as a whole is designed with careful thought for ethical principles to ensure that a scarce and precious resource should not be doled out on the basis of personal preferences (to friends or family of surgeons).

Originally posted by moonbus
Situations in which the issue of which one to save when you can’t save all of them arise more often than one might think in the medical profession, especially where transplantation is involved. Generally speaking, there are more hopeful recipients waiting for organs than there are suitable organs. It never happens, at least in Europe it should never happen, ...[text shortened]... should not be doled out on the basis of personal preferences (to friends or family of surgeons).

So your answer is what.......did you save your friend or the strangers.

Originally posted by radioactive69
So your answer is what.......did you save your friend or the strangers.

If what you want is a simple answer, either “the friend” or “the two strangers”, then I am not prepared to give one which applies to all cases, because I believe that real-life ethical situations are non-trivially complex. I would want to know a lot more detail about the situation before giving an answer.

How can I divert the train? Wouldn’t shouting to the friend to jump out of way be sufficient? Why is anybody out there walking on train tracks at all?! Are the two strangers adults capable of recognizing the danger and of taking action to help alleviate or avoid the danger for all concerned? These are not only not explained in the thought problem, it is a highly improbable situation as given in the OP (and in trolly problems in general, I might add).

I can image a case in which I might decide to save the two strangers and let the friend fend for himself; for example, if the two strangers were babies who could not fend for themselves, whereas the friend might yet save himself if I shouted to him jump out of the way.

I should not, in any case, expect any ethical theory (consequentialist or otherwise) to say that anyone should kill anyone. What one would do and what it is ethical to do may be very different.

Originally posted by vandervelde
I think I would probably come to hate the survivors at some point...

Mmm. Interesting choice of vocabulary. By "survivors" do you mean the hotel staff tasked with cleaning the sofa?