The survival lottery

Abstract

In a world where organ transplant procedures are perfected, two patients, Y and Z, argue that doctors should be allowed to kill a healthy individual to obtain organs that would save their lives. They propose a lottery scheme in which individuals are assigned a number and a computer randomly selects a donor when needed. This scheme, they argue, would save many lives while mitigating the terror and distress that would result from doctors arbitrarily selecting donors. The author examines the various objections to the lottery scheme, including the argument that killing is morally distinct from letting die, the right to self-defense, and the inherent abhorrence of such a system. Ultimately, the author concludes that the rejection of the lottery scheme is based on an intuitive moral aversion to killing, even if the consequences of doing so would lead to a net increase in the number of lives saved. – AI-generated abstract.