I am overjoyed to learn that the trapped miners have all been successfully rescued, but I was wondering…
Suppose you had a situation like that one, but rescue was (for some reason that we will conveniently gloss over) impossible (let’s say even a rescue attempt would be impossibe).
You’re pumping fresh air down to the trapped individuals and pumping out the water but they are still standing up their waists in cold water and are likely to die a fairly unpleasant death. As I said, in this hypothetical scenario there is nothing you can do to help their plight except perhaps offer them a less unpleasant way to die (perhaps by exchanging the fresh air suppy for something else).
Would that ever be done in reality or would we just sit by, wringing our hands until nature took its course?
Oh, and I specified adults in the thread title because I want to include the possibility of their fully informed consent or request.
I think there would be enough objection to prevent the persons in control of the scene (who would always be govt. disaster relief types, at least in this country) from taking such action.
Of course, I also think that such moral objections are incredibly naive, but you wanted to know about reality, right?
I don’t care much about the idea of the adult’s consent. The reason being that these people are in an extreme situation, probably not in their right mind. Rightly, they would be scared to death and probably incapable of making rational decisions.
The only argument against killing these people is that the longer they’re alive, the better chance of someone coming up with a brilliant idea to rescue them while they are still alive. I know that in this situation, rescue is impossible, but I wouldn’t like to just declare the situation impossible while those people are still alive.
I have no objections to assisted suicide, but to me “mercy killing” is a misnomer. It’s killing - and the “mercy” is only for the people doing the killing.
So what? The whole thing is subjective. The victim may be irrational, but in his mind he wants to keep living. He’s the one who, rationally or not, will experience those minutes of life - or the death you impose on him.