What Is The Thesis Of John Harris The Survival Lottery

Jordan Owens
Philosophy 101
David Killoren
11/26/2014
The Survival Lottery
In John Harris’s article The Survival Lottery, he proposes a situation where a potential strategy would be to kill a healthy individual in hopes to use his or her organs for transplantation, thus saving numerous lives at the cost of only one. However the dispute presented by Harris, which he claims to be lucid, does indeed raise a certain ethical disgust. The matters discussed such as whether leaving one to die is corresponding to killing, or is killing the blameless ever justified, are provocative in themselves and John’s views have been severely condemned. This paper will look at the main issues addressed by the survival lottery and attempt to prove Harris’s claim

From this idea he presents the example in the survival lottery of two patients Mr. Z and Mr. Y who are sure to pass without a successful organ transplant, but there are no spare organs to be found. They both propose that a healthy person, (Mr. A) be apprehended, executed painlessly and his organs be used for the operation. They claim that this is the lucid and ethically correct thing to be done, for to not do so would be surrendering two lives to only save one. It is the correct course of action since it exploits the number of lives saved at the cost of only one healthy and acquitted person. To battle the fear, anxiety and potential manipulation by doctors of who should be chosen and "confused” Mr. Y and Z suggest a lottery as the most suited way of deciding who should be the

Y and Z’s dispute depend on. Initially they say that everybody involved including themselves and Mr. A are all innocent. This is vital as it eliminates any other thought on who should be killed other than the foundation of statistics, so for the instant we are accepting the maximizing principle so that the irrationality it leads to can be shown. Mr. Y and Z then in result blame Mr. A and fault him of living at the price of two lives. This is their motive for murdering him, the power from which they justify their choices. But the irrationality follows this form, Mr. Y and Z have no foundation on which to blame Mr. A and level two lives against one dispute against him. Mr. A possesses every right to disprove this by aiming the blame back at either Mr. Y or Z and saying “you have no right to pick me, for I admit that if I were to be killed then two people will live, but if I were to kill one of you then two people will also prosper. I would not have to be killed, and whichever one of you I choose not to kill, cause the others organs could be used to save him. Since you say we are all blameless, and your only quarrel against me is that by killing me two lives would be saved. I have exposed that one cannot simply use this dispute against anyone without it being reversed against themselves. Therefore Mr. Y and Z’s dispute is overcome, their premise that killing one to save two still remains, but it cannot be