Scenario 1 A trolley is hurtling toward five workers on the track, and they will
ID: 362798 • Letter: S
Question
Scenario 1
A trolley is hurtling toward five workers on the track, and they will be killed if the trolley reaches them. You can pull the lever and change the path of the trolley, but there is one worker on the alternate route who will be killed instead.
Scenario 2
A trolley is hurtling toward five workers on the track, and they will be killed if the trolley reaches them. You are on a bridge above the track. You can push the large man next to you off the bridge and stop the trolley, but you will kill the man instead.
Doctor Scenario
You are a doctor in an emergency room. Six patients come to you who have been in a terrible trolley car accident. One is seriously injured, and five are moderately injured. You could spend all you time saving one seriously injured patient, but the other five moderately injured would die. Or you could split your time between the five moderately injured patients, but the other one would die.
Surgeon Scenario
You have five patients who all need different organ transplants, or they will die. You know for sure you will not get donor organs in time. There’s a perfectly healthy person napping next door with all the right organs in working order.
What were your conclusions? How did they change from scenario to scenario? How did the ethical philosophies that you used change from scenario to scenario?
Explanation / Answer
Scenario 1- Diverting the path of the trolly will amount to an action that is comparable with killing someone. Ethically it is wrong to kill even one person to save another five, who by stroke of fate have come in the way of the trolly.
Scenario 2- The scenario is again same as in case I where a murder can save lives of five persons, which is completely unethical.
Scenario 3- As a doctor, I need to give treatment to save all patients, but given the situation, I would go on with attending five moderately injured patients, because my duty is to save maximum lives possible.
Scenario 4- This scenario is related to right to live. One has no right to take the life of one healthy person even if this action may save five persons. It is sgainst the principles of natural justice and medical ethics.
The conclusions change from scenario to scenario because the cases 1, 2 and 4 were related to take life of an innocent person to save some persons. A murder is always against the ethics even if it can save lives. The scenario 3 relates to making choice between saving lives, where one has to decide a course of action that can save maximum lives possible. If the moderately injured could survive for sufficeint time, I would have treated the criticlly injured patient, but having no choice, it is ethical to save maximum possible lives.
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