could you kill? would you?

 

In the field of health care, we are often confronted with ethical dilemmas. Which patient should get the life-saving liver transplant? Which Covid patient should be placed on the last ventilator? When should we discontinue life support? We are sometimes called upon to decide who lives, and who dies. 

This past week I was happy to take care of two of my grandchildren (almost two-years-old and almost five) while my daughter and her husband enjoyed a much needed and well-deserved vacation. There was just one problem. While I was trying to decide between giving the kids mac & cheese or chicken nuggets for supper, I saw hungry children and their desperate mothers walking for miles with nothing at all to eat. When I tucked my little ones into their soft, warm beds, I saw children out in the cold with nowhere to sleep. We all did. We all watched thousands of women and children flee Ukraine with nothing but what they could fit into a battered suitcase to last them...well, perhaps forever. We watched as husbands and wives bid one another goodbye...perhaps forever.

 

"Every war is a war against children."

~John Steinbeck~

 

All this transpired while one man dined extravagantly and reclined comfortably in his secure fortress, taking it all in with deep satisfaction and great pride. 

 

“All war is a symptom

of man’s failure as a thinking animal.”

~John Steinbeck~

 

The cruelty, indeed the horror, of war is crushing to witness, especially when we are helpless to intervene. It raises ethical questions we are not trained to confront. Consider, for example this iteration of a classic ethical question:

 

There is a train coming down the tracks, and ahead, five people are tied to the tracks. They are unable to free themselves, and there is nothing you can do to rescue them. If the train continues on the tracks, they will all die. However, there is a lever. If you pull the lever, the train will be directed to another track, which has ONE person tied to it. You have two choices:

 

(a) If you do nothing, five people will die.

(b) If you pull the lever five people will live, but you will have killed the other one.

 

What would you do?

 

"It is both a blessing and

a curse to feel everything so very deeply."

~David Jones~

 

Now, think of it this way: Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men, women, and children will die trying to make their way out of Ukraine. One man holds their fate in his hands, and he refuses to act to save them. If you had a choice, what would you do? Would you do nothing and watch as hundreds die? Or would you do whatever you could to eliminate the man in charge?

 

Would you kill one person to save many?

 

Could you?

 

I've been toying with this dilemma for a few days now. I think I have my answer. Do you?

 

"The day the power of love

overrules the love of power,

the world will know peace."

~Mahatma Gandhi~

jan