Hello everyone,
What a prompt to start the day with, lol....
This prompt is with no doubt a prompt of ethical debate and one thing about ethical debates is that from every perspective you are coming from provided you can proffer enough points to drive your points home becomes right.
There is no static yes or no response in ethical debates and so in response to the prompt,
It could either be justified or not justified!!!
I remember when we did pharmacology because that was the course we offered where these kind of arguments comes in a lot, we were introduced to new terms which I will be bringing up for this prompt:
Utilitarianism: Just from the word utility; it means that if one or two sacrifices are made for the good of thousands, then that decision whatsoever it was remains correct and justified.
It believes that sacrifices must be made for the greater good.Deontological Ethics: This was the second option and contrary to the first means that actions are right and wrong regardless of whatever you were trying to achieve by those actions; so to say that, harming anyone is bad irrespective of the thousands you will be saving through that harm.
Driving this prompt home, let's run through what exactly happens in drug trials for instance:
When a new drug is produced and the necessary steps are followed before publicly certified by the drug boards of different countries as a safe drug to be used in treating one illness or another, it gets to a phase of clinical trials using humans as test samples.
In human testing, volunteers without any illness or patients which are mostly patients suffering from the particular illness whose drug has newly been developed are brought in and then made to take the new drugs... More like laboratory rabbits.
This enables the research team that developed the drugs to observe and see the possible side effects the drugs could cause and then get to add or remove an element from it until the benefits far outweighs the side effects.
Some of these humans used for this might even die when their body systems can't handle the side effects any longer but then, when these drugs finally gets to succeed, it will get to save every other person coming down with such illness, this time with more precision.
Here Are The Challenges...
Who gets to call the shots of whose life is more precious that should be used as test samples?
It becomes a challenge because everyone on earth is literally someone's loved one.
It also boils down to you as a human, as a researcher or whatever, can you live with what you've done?
Can you live with the fact that you willingly harmed someone for whatever reason behind it?
It's all a world of what ifs?
You've done a great job researching that with which you want to sacrifice a few for the greater good, but, what if the 0.5% chances of it not working becomes so significant that it didn't work meaning you made senseless sacrifices
Finally , how much harm to a few will really be enough and acceptable to save the many?
In reality, nothing good comes easy in life and sacrifices must be made to get to the next phase,however, these should really be regulated as much as possible.
With Ethical debates, It will always be a question of:
The end justifies the means Vs what we do defines us; not just the outcome because in doing, we become.
Thanks for reading and have a nice day 👍
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Awesome post
Thanks for sharing this with us.
Life is about sacrifices indeed.
You're welcome