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?
That's very unintuitive. And we're stipulating no negative ripple effects. In fact, we can stipulate hat the entire world except you is afflicted by one of the two diseases.
Given those parameters, then whether a duty exists is an empirical based on the percent of people who have the disease so that deaths resulting from giving the medicine are side effects vs unacceptable risks. 50/50 or even 80/20 wouldn’t rise to the level of duty (although giving the medicine would probably be excused). And 99.99% would rise to the level of duty. Id say people wouldn’t want a cure forced on them without at least a 90% survival rate. While the precise number is up for debate, constructivist deontology can accommodate this scenario.
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?
That's very unintuitive. And we're stipulating no negative ripple effects. In fact, we can stipulate hat the entire world except you is afflicted by one of the two diseases.
Given those parameters, then whether a duty exists is an empirical based on the percent of people who have the disease so that deaths resulting from giving the medicine are side effects vs unacceptable risks. 50/50 or even 80/20 wouldn’t rise to the level of duty (although giving the medicine would probably be excused). And 99.99% would rise to the level of duty. Id say people wouldn’t want a cure forced on them without at least a 90% survival rate. While the precise number is up for debate, constructivist deontology can accommodate this scenario.