Monday, 17 August 2009

Moral Dilemma #1

You have been given six months to live unless a suitable liver can be found. You are a strange blood type and five months have past - no suitable donor is found - the clock keeps ticking.

Finally in Wellington a particularly bureaucratic civil servant sticks his head too deeply into the trough, inhales and starts choking. He staggers around his sea view office and blinded by his own shortsightedness he trips over the his latest economic death legislation and tangles himself in his own red tape. An ambulance is called but he dies a slow, painful death on the way to the hospital, where they find his donor card and harvest his organs - a perfect match has been found.

Do you accept his liver?

6 comments:

Kiwiwit said...

Well, it's always been acceptable to consume your enemies' organs in primitive societies. Given that Justice France has endorsed Makutu, I'd say taking the civil servant's liver is entirely consistent with NZ's cultural norms. The only thing I can't figure out, is why you'd want to wait for him to die first?

Anonymous said...

Believe it or not, Anna, I am genuinely undecided!

On the one hand it is against my principles to have anything to do with such a person - some maggoty civil servant scumbag, and would rather die than compromise principle...('better dead than red', and all that)

On the other hand it is in my self interest to accept his organs...

I am always slow/reluctant to compromise [about anything] and..yes..gosh..genuinely cannot decide.

Libertyscott said...

The liver doesn't carry any volition, so if it is healthy, take it. After all, sustaining your own life is the highest value, and you did not initiate force to do it.

Peter Cresswell said...

To be fair, the bureaucrat was already long dead even before his accident . . .

Anonymous said...

Of course: it's his liver not his brain.

Anonymous said...

Kasper here: The liver isn't a person. It's merely a liver. The host is dead anyway. I would accept.