At the end of class last week I was thinking about cures to diseases and the lengths to which we are will to go to get them. While there are certainly costs to obtain cures (other than just financial), I wonder if there is an acceptable limit. To me, it’s like the question of whether or not you could kill someone if you knew it would save 1000, 10,000 or even 100,000 lives.
Although I don’t know that I could make that decision, I do find it hard to believe that after finding a cure to a fatal disease, and thus finding the potential to save many lives, we would be able to go back to living without that cure. In terms of the book, I think it brings up an interesting ethical dilemma. While I think Ishiguro is definitely trying to get us to consider whether or not we should be killing to save, I think the debate is also about who/what is acceptable to kill in order to save. I think that this is a big issue for many people who consider some animals worthy of medical experiments, but humans not. I’d like to talk about this more in class to see what other people think.
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Your thoughts reminded me something I heard once-asking if someone would be willing to kill Hitler as a baby to save all of the people he would ultimately kill. I think that alot of people would not even have to think about it and would just say, 'Yea..of course.. one life is less important than all of those other lives.' but, I honestly don't know if I could do it. either of them---kill one person for the cure for thousands of lives or ever kill Hitler as a baby.
ReplyDeleteI guess it has alot to do with whether people are faced with the choice--so, many people would probably just choose to ignore things that were happening because they weren't doing the dirty work themselves.
That's an interesting dilemma you bring up about being able to go back to being without a cure after deciding that the cure is unethical. I think it all comes down to what we define as ethical. To me, it sounds like the debate about stem cell research and the use of embryos to obtain stem cells.
ReplyDeleteI'd also agree with you, Whitney, that killing one to save many is kind of a decision people would ignore unless they had to make the decision themselves.
Most people wouldn't want to be put in that situation at all. Personally I think that there is a point where killing one is unethical but how could you have 1,000's of other lives hanging over your head. It would be the case where maybe both are unethical but the lesser evil must be chosen which could also apply to the issue of animal research. However, before we take my word for it we first in order to make a good decision as Rodney said we would have to go to the basics and start to address what is ethical and not.
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