Ramafuchs wrote:Finn
Before i go to bed i wish to get a clarification from you.
I had deeply indulged with your above response but this particular sentense is difficult to understand.
"Our capacity for empathy and altruism is remarkable, and clearly something we hold in great esteem, but what sense does it make for 10 people to successively drown trying to save someone? "
It is inherent empathy and altruism that leads to people throwing themselves in a body of water in an attempt to save someone, even when they know they too are in danger of drowning, and even when they
have seen several would-be rescuers before them actually drown.
This sort of thing happens all of the time, and the qualities that lead to it are highly regarded within virtually all cultures of mankind. When such events take place we speak of heroism, bravery, compassion and self-sacrifice, and we honor in equal measure those who gave up their lives trying to save someone and those that actually accomplish the rescue.
In the moment of crisis when immediate decisions must be made we have the capacity of relying upon inherent virtues to decide our actions, rather than deliberative logic. Again, it is our nature to greatly honor the decisions themselves as well as those who make them.
However, such decisions are not necessarily the most rational or most favorable in a broader sense.
Let's stay with the example of a drowning child. Should the child's mother and father both risk drowning in attempts to save the child? Even if they succeeded would the result outweigh the risk of the alternative outcome to the rest of their children? In certain, actual circumstances, the loss of both parents would doom the orphaned children to a life of hardship and pain. Perhaps removed from the immediacy of the life and death situation, the parents, given time to consider all the ramifications of their actions, would still take the risk of dying themselves to save the child---But perhaps not. Certainly someone not related to the family, but charged with preserving its overall well being, might easily determine that the death of the two parents was too great a price for the family to pay in exchange for the life of one child.
Given the immediacy of the crisis, the instinctual reaction of parents, and the cultural (and perhaps even genetic) underscoring of individual heroics, the parents are likely to make the decision to risk drowning many more times than not. This is to be expected
Similarly, in the case of the young woman in need of a liver transplant we can expect, many more times than not, for the parents to favor any attempt to save their child, regardless of its cost or its chances of success. Of course if the parents alone are required to fund the transplant then whether or not it it is done will depend upon the limits of their finances. We can expect however that most parents will be willing to sell everything they own in an attempt to raise the necessary funds.
If we change the circumstances a bit and we introduce a third party who is responsible for funding the transport (private or public), then we can certainly expect the parents to request, if not demand, funding more times than not.
This does not speak poorly of the parents, but it also doesn't necessarily speak poorly of the third party if it refuses.
The third party, unlike the parents, will come to the decision with a far different point of view. It will not be flooded by strong emotions and instincts. It will be required to view the decision within the context of broader circumstances and interests, and it is very likely to reach its decision through cold logic, not heated impulse.
We has members of our society are not only more capable of approaching the decision more dispassionately than the parents, but we owe it to society to do so --- and particularly so when any measure of sacrifice required will not be born by us or will only be born over time.
Insisting that the third party pay for the transplant in the case in point and all other high cost, low chance procedures may satisfy our empathetic impulses, but it is also likely to result in broader harm for many more people.
Obviously it is very difficult to come up with a bright line between that degree of medical care which is not justifiable and that which is. I would need more facts to reach a decision on this particular case, but I will not automatically condemn the third parties (the insurer or the med providers) for the original decision not to proceed.
I can clearly empathize with the parents in this case and if it was my daughter I would probably follow pretty much the same path they did. My insistence on the transplant being performed, however, would not necessarily make it the most sensible decision any more than deciding to have ten people make successive attempts to save a drowning child, when each of the ten attempts resulted in the rescuers deaths, would be.
