Another One

[Easy E]

if you extended the life of everyone for 6 months, should you allow the 1000 people to be killed?

What if they were insurance salesmen? Lawyers? US Congresspersons?

[Easy E]

does it really make a difference one way or the other?


Should we be ignoring the loss of life as irrelevant and looking at the other issues that may be involved here, or may be considered secondary to savings lives?


How much is a life "worth" anyway? That question, more than any other, is what determines a lot of the answer here IMO.

[Easy E]

[ QUOTE ]

The real world example would likely be akin to the example of, "would you kill Hitler before WWII if you had the chance (knowing what you know now and assuming you get away without repercussion)?"

[/ QUOTE ]

That one is easy. The REALLY difficult question would be "If you could kill Hitler, what are the chances that the world would be WORSE off today, than better?"

Wrap your mind around THAT one for a while!

[Easy E]

I don't think there's any way of framing a question that can't be weaseled out of.

I'm beginning to wonder if the true test is that someone DOESN'T try to weasel out of making a hard choice statement and then goes on to examine more deeply the implications of the thought process.

[Easy E]

[ QUOTE ]

What is to say that this new uber drug that you plan to release, will not at some point do the same thing? I assume testing methodologies were used in both cases, so there will still be an unknown that was missed in the newer drug.

I think I'd fess up and let someone better at testing drugs create a new company and start from scratch (assuming you do not allow the cop outs of passing the company's data along).

[/ QUOTE ]

I find your thought interesting, but short-sighted. What if the uber drug WON'T have the same 10% chance? And how long might it take some company to get back to the same level?

The bigger question is, is there REALLY a right to life, and what does that entail?

[BadBoyBenny]

Me too. My point is that a net gain in lifetime for humanity may not justify being responsible for any deaths. Morality can't always be broken into numbers.

[yimyammer]

[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

I guess Im stupid, because I dont get your point.

Supressing the data is not an option for me. So I guess thats my answer, although I really dont see a question in your statement

[DPCondit]

[ QUOTE ]
does it really make a difference one way or the other?


[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, of course it does.

[ QUOTE ]
Should we be ignoring the loss of life as irrelevant and looking at the other issues that may be involved here, or may be considered secondary to savings lives?


How much is a life "worth" anyway? That question, more than any other, is what determines a lot of the answer here IMO.

[/ QUOTE ]

Of course these things matter quite a bit. What if the 1000 people were sitting on death row and scheduled to be executed in a week, with no further chances for pardon or delay, and the 50 people (that you would have to kill) would be expected to live another 30 or 40 years?

While a certain number of lives may be saved by a specific treatment, many greater numbers of people may lose some number of years off of their life expectancy from the same treatment from other side effects of the treatment (who would NOT have died so quickly from their original illness).

There are often trade-offs like this, but until something has been in use and researched for a long time, it is often impossible to know what the real trade-offs are, and the real net reduction (or increase) of early mortality due to such treatment. That does not even take into account less tangible things, such as the cost of the treatment (which may destroy that person financially), or side effects, which may not be fatal, but cause that person to live life in a much more compromised way than they would have otherwise.

Don

[Demana]

Maybe I missed something, but aren't there really two issues to be thought about:

#1 The moral dilema of the disclosure.
Do you spill the beans?


#2 Questioning whether or not you have accurately calculated the 90% success rate (or whatever it is) for the new drug.
Are you sure that your latest drug does not suffer from the same side effects as the previous one (basically, was the new drug subject to the same testing flaw as the previous one)?


Since you need to know the answer to #2 before you can really say that the new drug is a god send, I'd say that it is better to blow the whistle and ensure that the new drug is tested correctly, rather than risking more lives with an incorrectly tested *new* drug.


~Demitri