Thursday, October 2, 2014
ebola morals
Ok so I have been hearing about ebola plague and how it has reached america now and they have a couple victims in hospitals and all that good stuff. So lets talk about moral actions with the plague. I have made a trolley car problem for you all to have fun with today. Here it is, you are a doctor in a hospital that just received a man who has the first case of ebola in your country into your hospital. Now here is the question, you know that the risk of it spreading throughout the hospital and country are huge due to this one guy who brought the disease to your country, so you have two options now (deal with it): you can kill the man and burn the body ridding the country of the disease(we will say it works here and if you do this the disease is gone from your country because he is the only guy that has it) or you can keep him in the hospital treating him and let the disease spread (for the sake of the problem we will say it will spread if you do not kill him). The thing is this man does have a chance of getting better and surviving the disease as does everyone that gets it, but they will suffer greatly. What do you do? Now lets assume that the disease is completely lethal, do you change your answer?
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From my knowledge, evola is mortal virus. The man has no chances of surviving either way. He will die soon or later. It is immoral wrong to kill him, and also, I am not sure if the law system allows it. Although, if it was legal to kill him for the well being of everyone, I don't see why someone will disagree.
ReplyDeleteLike Orlando said he will die regard less, but as a doctor I would not want to purposely kill a man without trying to save an innocent life. In the end I would rather just lose one life and save millions instead of maybe saving one and potentially infecting many more.
ReplyDeleteSo there are two scenarios at play here there is the scenario that if the man could be cured and if the man cannot be healed, he would die regardless. Since this topic is hypothetical because if caught early ebola can be cured if got at an early enough stage other then that I believe they quarantine individuals. If the man has the chance to be cured, as a doctor is my moral duty to help not hurt people, I would quarantine the man and hope for the best, if he a was quarantined the disease would not spread. If there was no chance the man can be cured I would consult and tell him the circumstance and give him options. I would not secretly kill his body because that’s just wrong in general doctors do not have the right to take life just as anyone else doesn’t. I would pretty much declare to the government and him that euthanasia is the only solution because of the spread.
ReplyDeleteFor this specific trolley problem I'm gonna have to play on Kant's side. First of all it is not morally correct under any circumstance to kill a man, even if he has a disease that could potentially spread to other human beings. Also, it is impossible to weight the outcome of the circumstance. Since we do not know the future, it is almost impossible to know if the outcome of killing that man would result positive. Even if the intentions of killing one man seemed positive on a larger scale, it could in fact turn out worst then expected. In my opinion, I would restrain myself from harming a sick man since the consequences are unpredictable.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Maritza on this scenario. I do not believe that killing an innocent man will do any good. I also think that even if the type of Ebola being described in this scenario is deadly, there are plenty of methods that could prevent it from spreading. This is specially true if the man has a possible chance of making a full recovery.
ReplyDeleteIn this scenario, I would not kill the man. The first reason is that it would be immoral to kill an innocent man. The second is that there would still be unforseen consequences. There would also be a host of options and reactions by the doctor and various other people. What about the family? Would he try to cover up the death? Would he be open about it? Is he in a first or third world country? Thus scenario has a lot fridge logic.
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