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Deciding Whose Death Matters Most

Mike Treder

Mike Treder
Ethical Technology

Posted: Nov 20, 2009

Asking the question is comparatively easy. Finding the answer is hard.

Would you run into a burning building to try to save a baby you knew was trapped inside? Would it make a difference if that baby was your own?  

Would you run into a burning building to try to save an 80 year-old woman you knew was dying of cancer? What if she was your mother?

Imagine working in a triage unit during wartime or following a natural disaster. Given limited medical supplies and severe constraints on available personnel, how would you decide who gets treated first?

Does it matter more that 17,000 children die of hunger every day, or that another 130,000 people die each day from other causes?

Assuming we can’t do everything all at once, should we place more emphasis on reducing preventable deaths among underprivileged children, or in extending healthy lifespans for aging adults?

In other words, whose death matters most?

Mike Treder is the Managing Director of the IEET, and former Executive Director of the non-profit Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.

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COMMENTS

Aleksei Riikonen • Finland • Nov 20, 2009

A good answer to this question:

http://www.nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.html

What matters most is preventing the extinction of human (or other worthwhile) life. An existential risk outcome would represent the loss of an astronomical amount of lives, and is astronomically more important to avoid than the ongoing deaths of comparatively small numbers of people.

CygnusX1 • Samsara • Nov 21, 2009

I would say that all these humanitarian crises have equal importance, and that perhaps we should think about addressing them all? Perhaps we just need to be more organised, (globally), in the way we tackle these problems?

I am guessing that most folks would want to change the entire world for the better, yet find it impossible to do this – or am I just another idealist?

Spock -- "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one"
Kirk -- "The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many"

Which one of these lines is correct – you decide!

veronica • • Nov 22, 2009

Maybe the priority (at least in some cases) should go to the disease rather than the person. I read somewhere that in one city where this is done, the person with pneumonia would go first, because it can be very deadly, yet it's the most curable.

veronica • • Nov 22, 2009

(In the city I was referring to, hunger was not at all common.)

I noticed the title of this essay is "Deciding whose death matters most." Why that title, instead of "Deciding whose life matters most"?

schroob • • Nov 30, 2009

Or maybe "Deciding whose death matters least"??? It's funny that the author says that the question is easy....I think the issue is that it's even hard to define the right question! Everyone is raising great points and coming up with ways to try to address the question. But if we cannot define exactly what the question is, how do we begin to answer it?

Aleksei's quote states that the prevention of humankind's extinction (or the perpetuation of "worthwhile" life) is the highest imperative. On a larger scale, why is humankind's perpetual existence the prime imperative? And what measurement would be used to determine what life is "worthwhile"? On a smaller scale, what if the "ongoing deaths of comparatively small numbers of people" killed off the only people with antibodies needed to fight a global disease of epidemic proportions? Not that we could ever know that beforehand...but still, if we're measuring babies for their potential worth, we need to measure ANY potential worth, right?

As far as prioritizing aid on the basis of the disease...what if the disease isn't the root cause of the problem? What if it's lack of arable land to produce food, or desperate poverty that fails to address basic needs for life, lack of education about health, religious practices that are detrimental to well-being, or a country ruled by a despot?

I certainly don't suggest that we stop trying to help. But we do need to open ourselves up to asking more questions...and figuring out if there's anything we can do to help.

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Deciding Whose Death Matters Most