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What Is The Thesis Of The Survival Lottery By John Harris

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In The Survival Lottery, John Harris argues about the difference between killing and letting die. He presents this information through questioning it in a thought experiment. In the thought experiment he presents a situation where two people are in need of organ transplants like a heart and set of lungs. If there is a stock of spare organs then to save the lives of the patients, all that the doctors would have to do would be to do the transplant. If they refused to do the surgery and the patient died as a result then the doctors essentially killed their patients. However if the circumstances were different such as there were no organs available other than killing a healthy person then the doctors did everything they could …show more content…

Their proposal is that everyone is given a number of sorts. Whenever a doctor has two or more patients whose lives could be saved if one person was killed they would use this “lottery system”. The computer would randomly draw a name and that person would be killed or “give life” to others. As a result multiple lives could be saved at the cost of one and the majority of the population could have longer and happier lives. There are a few drawbacks to this however such as older people needing transplants more than younger people. As a result of this there could be a substantial difference in the age population of the …show more content…

One of the rules that they create is that if the illness was brought on by oneself, then they should not be able to benefit from the “lottery system”. For example Harris used patient W and patient X. Patient W was a heavy smoker and destroyed his lungs with his habits. Patient X was a heavy drinker and destroyed his liver with his alcohol consumption. Since both patient X and W caused their organ failures through lack of care and wellbeing, it would be morally wrong to kill person B. Additionally patients Z and Y enact the “third parties” rule. This would ensure that patient Z wouldn’t die to save patient Y and vice versa even though the life to death ratio would remain the same, one to one. Essentially the patients who are in need of organ transplants and healthy people are put into classes. Then there is the issue that arises from this that is what is “dying” classified as and the priority it takes in the “lottery system”. This is more or less the premises for the thought experiment, there are other issues that are brought up in regards to it. One of them is that interplanetary travel is possible and there is an identical society to ours and they implemented this “lottery system”. The people whose number is called to “give life” to others decide to flee, then essentially they are branded as a murderer. There is a harsh reality to this, but the

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