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
The consequences of not giving the medicine would be pretty good as well. For a niche disease like that, people would make their preferences known beforehand of whether they would want to take the risk of the medicine. They’d also have more trust in the medical system knowing that their won’t be subject to something akin to an organ harvesting scenario.
Imagine if the numbers were 501 vs 499, would giving the medicine still be obvious?
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*.”
This is an altered trolley problem. There’s no duty to rescue since no one would agree to be forcibly sacrificed to save another, as explained here https://open.substack.com/pub/neonomos/p/what-is-morality?r=1pded0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
The consequences of not giving the medicine would be pretty good as well. For a niche disease like that, people would make their preferences known beforehand of whether they would want to take the risk of the medicine. They’d also have more trust in the medical system knowing that their won’t be subject to something akin to an organ harvesting scenario.
Imagine if the numbers were 501 vs 499, would giving the medicine still be obvious?