Suppose that there are 1,000 people who each are unconscious. 80% of them have a disease that will kill them soon, before they wake up. 20% of them have a disease that just knocks them unconscious, but once they wake up, they’ll be fine. You are a doctor, and you have the ability to give them all a medicine. This medicine will kill them if they have the second disease, but it will save them if they have the first disease. You have no way of knowing which of the two diseases they have.
It seems very obvious that you should give them the cure. If you don’t, 200 will die, if you do, 800 will die. If you could ask any of their family members, they’d all endorse you doing it! So, no brainer, right?
Well, deontology holds that it’s wrong to kill 200 even if you save 800. In this case, because giving them the medicine will kill 200 and save 800, it seems on its face wrong, if deontology is true. Thus, deontology is wrong because it wrongly holds that you shouldn’t give them the medicine.
The deontologist could reply by saying the following. Suppose someone would, if given the choice, consent to some act. Then that act is permissible, if it produces great benefit. However, we can get around this. We can suppose that if the person was asked, they would have to be conscious, and one who was conscious would know which of the two conditions they had. Thus, 20% of the people wouldn’t consent.
How is this any different from the organ harvesting case? In the organ harvesting case, everyone would agree to it if they didn’t know whether they’d be the recipient of the organs or the harvester. However, they do, so people say that it’s wrong.
So, it seems that deontology has unacceptable implications in this case. Objections?
I object as a deontologist. Basically you give a medecine that is set up to save people, or at least save some people. No medecine is perfect, so it is possible to have some bad consequences. However, you intrisically give a medecine which is a good action.
When you take an organ, it is intrisically a bad action because people need their organs: you have to make a complex perequation on the capacity of the donor to survive vs the capacity of the receiver to survive to justify it
Nice post. BTW, I think there is a mistake at the start of the second paragraph: “It seems very obvious that you should give them the *disease*.”