Utilitarianism In The Movie Contagion

Contagion, a film released in 2011, is a great example of Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a theory that promotes the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The movie’s strength lies with the characters and the way they portray a utilitarian view. In this film, many doctors and experts in disease control are desperately looking for a cure for an unknown disease that has spread through the world killing hundreds of thousands of people. Knowing that the virus could potentially kill off the entire population of the world, the CDC and its employees worked day and night for months and months to come up with a vaccination to health the vast majority of the population. This is an act of what is morally right and an example of what you should do, which again, ties into utilitarianism thinking.

For example, Dr. Mears puts herself in harms way when she goes to an infected city to help prevent the spread of the virus to the rest of the healthy communities. She finds a large gymnasium to hold the major infected population that needed care. She brings in the sick to help her gain information and come up with some answers. Dr. Mears sacrifices herself for this issue and ends up dying from the virus just like everyone else around her. Similarly, Dr. Hextall, another scientist doing everything in her power, takes the matter of sacrifice another step further. By putting herself in the way of infection and sacrificing her own body to come up with a cure, she injects herself with a mutated strain of the virus. Regardless of the results, she believed it would work. So, with no hesitation she became a human experiment for the greatest good of people. This makes Dr. Hextall a Utilitarian because she demonstrates selflessness and societal