Philosophy: ethics

Imagine the following scenario. You are a doctor working in an emergency room in a remote location. After a serious accident, three

patients arrive in the emergency room. The first patient (let’s call her “Patient A”) is in a better state than the other two, and her

condition is stabilized quickly, so it looks like she has a fair chance of survival. But the other two victims are in dire need of blood

transfusions if they are going to survive, and the only appropriate source is Pateint A, who happens to be bloodtype O. If you give a

transfusion to one or both of the two remaining patients, Patient A’s chance of survival will either be reduced by half or reduced to

nothing.What do you choose to do? If you do nothing, Patient A will likely survive, and the other two will die. If you give a partial

transfusion, Patient A might survive, and so might another person. A total transfusion could save the two other patients, but would mean

the death of Patient A. What will you do? Your most important task is to justify your answer in terms of the philosophers that we have

studied in this course.