Scenario 1 A trolley is hurtling toward five workers on the track, and they will

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.

In general, how do you approach difficult ethical questions? Frame your answer using the Ethical Behavior Model presented in Chapter 5. What elements of this model can help inform your future behavior and explain past behavior?

Explanation / Answer

So looking at the possible ooutcomes the least damage causing are to be taken up.

1. Divert to kill one worker, as this is the best action that can be ensued to have the best of possible outcomes.

2. Push the heavy worker, so only 1 person is killed and others are safe.

3. 5 moderately injured need to be saved, this means more will be saved at the cost of 1.

4. Here it is not ethical, as there are several probabilities of survival. As even when all the organs are got there needs to be perfect match, so chances are all the 6 will die.

Again there needs to be consent in place in this regard.

The elements needed for consideration are:

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