What does it mean to be a person? How sacred is human life?

Great Debates
1

How sacred is human life?

When we talk about:[ul][li]abortion[/li][li]pre-natal testing[/li][li]death penalty[/li][li]organ transplant waiting lists[/li][li]infanticide[/li][li]planting trees outside Columbine[/li][li]euthanasia[/li][li]experimental drug studies[/li][li]cloning[/ul][/li]it very often comes down to somebody’s judgment about what it means to be human and the relative worth of two or more individuals.

Below I’ve listed 20 potential humans.

Are all of them fully human?

Are all of them people?

Are any of them more desirable than any other?

If one or more had to die, would you prefer it be random, or can you list the order in which you would prefer it happen (or at least list a subset which should be taken first or saved until the end)?

The list:[list=1][li]unborn baby[/li][li]unborn baby with confirmed downs syndrome[/li][li]1-hour-old baby[/li][li]5 year-old child[/li][li]10-year-old child[/li][li]10-year-old mass murderer (school shooting)[/li][li]12-year-old with I.Q. 40[/li][li]18-year-old who has been in a coma for 3 years[/li][li]21-year-old college graduate[/li][li]21-year-old drug dealer[/li][li]24-year-old pregnant woman[/li][li]30-year-old pregnant woman who will die if she gives birth[/li][li]30-year-old terminally ill cancer patient[/li][li]40-year-old mass murderer/rapist[/li][li]40-year-old with I.Q. 40[/li][li]50-year-old alcoholic[/li][li]60-year-old who has been in a coma for 3 years[/li][li]80-year-old nobel prize winner[/li][li]102-year-old practicing physician[/li][li]Brain-dead person of any age[/li][li]Human clone engineered to be brain-dead[/li][li]Fully cognizant human clone[/list=1][/li]This is not meant to be one of those “you have a lifeboat that only holds 10 people…” questions. Our society is making these choices every day whether we admit it or not. So… what makes a person human? What makes a human a person? How sacred is the life of either? When is it okay to choose one life over another? Does age/potential make a difference? When is it okay to take one of these lives for the greater social good? Is that “sacred” concept merely a survival tactic of civilized communities, or is it something more? What is it exactly that makes an unborn baby or a mentally incapacitated person more inviolate than a test chimp?

<FONT SIZE=2 COLOR=333333>Disclaimer: please don’t infer my views from this. These are questions, not opinions (yet).</FONT>

2

Just another thought:

If all life is sacred, why do we laugh at the Darwin Awards?

<font size=1 color=333333>Note: Sorry about the weird spacing and counting error in the first post.</font>

3

One possibly-apocryphal story told to me by a former Lockheed employee goes as follows:

When McDonnell Douglas was designing the DC-10, they knew their plane would have to compete with the Lockheed L-1011 in the airliner marketplace. During the early prototyping phase, Douglas’s engineers discovered that the support structures in a certain place on the DC-10 were thin enough that they might not survive the repeated flexing of the aircraft as it took off, climbed, descended, landed, etc… However, if they beefed up those support structures, it would add extra weight to the plane, requiring bigger engines, tougher engine-support mounts, bigger fuel tanks, bigger wings to hold the fuel tanks and create the additional necessary lift, etc., and that this would all significantly drive up the cost of the final product (and require more design time to re-engineer the plane, which might give their competitors a shot at an earlier market window).

Douglas calculated how many planes might fail due to the weak support structures, how many lives would be lost by those failed planes crashing, and ultimately what it would cost the company in funeral expenses, potential lawsuits, and lost prestige. They ultimately decided that Douglas would lose more money if they tried to fix the flaw than if they built the flawed planes as-designed, sold them, and took the consequences of an inevitable failure.

Eventually, one of their DC-10s did fail as predicted. Sometime in the 1980s, a DC-10 exploded in midair over France, due to metal fatigue in those selfsame flawed support structures. And it cost the company somewhat, but in the end Douglas was better off than if they’d lost the competition with Lockheed’s L-1011.

The moral of the story is: There is a price tag you can put on human life.

The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.

4

All of the above people deserve to live. I could not choose which should live or die.

Are there people on the list that would likely affect society less if they died rather than someone else? Sure. But while someone with a mental defect may not be as big a benefit to society as a doctor, but if that person were your child would you want them sacrificed?

I do believe in the death penalty but just because I do not believe that the justice system can really rehabilitate criminals and while the death penalty does not really deter people from commiting crimes, it does leave one less criminal on this earth.

But other than that I am not for anyone dying (not even the unborn child). However, to save the life of the mother, I guess I would sacrifice the child.

But of course these questions you ask are very difficult.

Jeffery

5

A question like this is meaningless unless the terms are clearly defined.

The question presumes that we all understand the word “sacred” and agree on that meaning. Not to mention the word “human”. Not to mention “life”.

These are not universally agreed-upon concepts.

The only answer I can imagine would go like this: Go back to your source of the concept “sacred”, which is probably some religion or another, and see what that religion says about the various examples you give. If your source of the concept “sacred” is your own life experiences, then anything we post here is not going to help you too much.

6

Ah… so in your opinion, the lives of the death-row inmate and the endangered mother’s baby can be sacrificed in favor of the others.

This is what I’m looking for. Nobody here is a heartless bastard. Most of us would never want to explicitly take one of those lives. Yet, we do have opinions about their relative worth and those come out in our views on the death penalty, medically-necesary abortion, etc.

I agree with you certainly about the endangered mother. I’m not sure I agree about the inmate, but I’m not opposed enough to protest. I would also sacrifice the mindless clone to save a thinking person. Those are some of the easier choices. I’m still pondering the rest.

For those on the edge, can we put a price on their lives? Can we kill the mass murderer because it would cost $100,000 to house him for life? What about $1 million? $10 million? Is it okay to give the organ transplant to the person who can pay the most, thereby feeding money into the system to help research new treatments and artificial organs? Is it okay to have an abortion if your unborn child will be mentally handicapped and you cannot afford the care? If someone is willing to give you $100,000 for that care, is it now wrong to abort?

Tracer is right that people are putting prices on human life everyday. What does that say about its “sacred” quality? Are we deluding ourselves that our lives mean anything more than those of animals? Are we better off creating a good world for 95% of the population at the cost of the others, or a mediocre world for 99%?

7

If you read the OP, that wording (“is human life sacred?”) is only a catch-all around the other questions. IMO, it represents something intangible that’s often mentioned but never clearly understood (except by religious fundamentalists), and my whole point is to define it by asking:

What does it mean to be “human”?

What does it mean to be a “person”?

Can you ever judge the relative worth of two lives?

When is it okay to choose one life over another and which should be chosen?

Ignore the “sacred” part if it means nothing to you. How would you answer the other questions?

8

I’m not sure I can identify with the concept ‘sacred’, at least outside of a religious context. The degree to which I think the lives of the above listed should be preserved is to me then a combination of the degree to which I empathize with them, value them (as being helpful or hurtful to me or society in general)with a recognition that certain practicalities need to be considered (for instance you cannot attach value to the life of an unborn child whose birth would result in the death of itself and its mother both - since no scenario results in survival of the child its simply not practical to consider it).

Human life is actually worth less in our court system than human suffering - if you are paralyzed for life in an accident you will probably be able to get more money in litigation than your family would if you were killed. The reasons for this are primarily practical. The story of McDonnel-Douglas may or may not be true - but all business has inherent risk - practically every product could be made safer at a higher production, engineering and user cost.

The DC-10 has not to my knowledge had an especially bad service record - so in the end does it really matter?

9

I say kill the mass murderer not because of the cost, but because of the lack of rehibilitation and the liklihood that he will be released at sometime on society to kill again. If we are going to go by cost, every criminal should be put to death to save the cost of housing them. I do not believe that, but if you believe it to be a matter of cost, then that is what should happen.

A baby, IMHO, should never be killed due to its inconvience. Saving the mother’s life is probably preferable, due to the fact that she has already survived this far and has hopefully been a useful member of society. The baby may survive the birth but may die shortly thereafter. So, if my wife were going to die during labor and the only way to save her was to abort the baby, then yes, I would rather have her than the baby that might not live. I therefore feel the same for other women who are not my wife.

I personally do not put a price on a human life. But under certain circumstances I will make a choice.

A much harder question is if my wife and child were drowning and I thought I could only save one, which one would I save? Or who would I save first?

My answer is I do not honestly know.

Jeffery

10

I think StrTrkr777 comes to the heart of the mattter - the only way to measure life is in comparison with other life. We all agree that every person has considerably worth, and in a perfect world we’d be able to feed, cloth, and shelter everybody.

This not being a perfect world, people’s worth becomes a matter of what the offer society as a whole. Obviously, in this light, the brilliant doctor is worth more than the mass murderer. The doctor tends to bring happiness and joy to people as he saves lives. The mass murderer creates misery and chaos as he/she kills our loved ones.

To fully answer meara’s questions in the OP, you have to pit the examples against each other. And even then, it’s hard. I’d say that a 21 year old college graduate has more worth than a 1 day old baby. However, I expect that my opinion would change somewhat if we were talking about some random 21 year old vs. my baby. So that brings another factor in - we can only rate these if we make the assumption that they’re all random strangers. Obviously, we all want OUR friends to be at the top of the heap.

11

Cooper wrote:

According to page 17 of http://www.boeing.com/news/techissues/pdf/1997_statsum.pdf , between 1988 and 1997 the DC-10 had 2.2 accidents resulting in the hull being damaged beyond repair per 1 million departures. This is a higher hull-loss-accident-per-million-departures rate than any other jetliner of its generation, or any other jetliner built since. Only the obscure BAC 11 and F-28 of the generation previous to the DC-10 exceeded its accident rate.

The MD-11 came in second, with 1.8 hull-loss accidents per million departures. It should be noted that the MD-11 is little more than a modernized, slightly-larger variant of the DC-10.

The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.

12

Of all the OP’s choices, all are human; that is, all are human bodies.

How sacred are their lives? Assuming the unborn on the list are wanted pregnancies, I’d say 20 & 21 (the brain-dead ones) are the least sacred. There’s no possibility that they’d be walking, talking persons again or ever.

Not that the bodies shouldn’t be treated with respect. The brain-dead person had a life before whatever put him in that state. But I wouldn’t risk my life to rescue a b/d person.

As to the b/d clone made that way: hopefully, the law will continue to regulate genetic research as to not allowing this to happen. What if something happened that instead of making it b/d, it grew half a brain? It would be cognizant to some degree, but probably severely retarded. Creating genetic monstrosities (a la the Twisty Cats woman) is unethical IMO.

A similar case not mentioned in the OP is a baby born or unborn w/o a brain. (I forget the terminology.) That would fall under the #20 case. There was a situation where a woman’s baby was born this way. It breathed and had a heartbeat because it had a brain stem, but no higher brain tissue. She insisted that it be fed (stomach tube) and cared for in the hospital. She prayed that it would awaken, blind to the fact that w/o a brain, that was hopeless. It would’ve been better had she said her goodbyes and allow organ donation from her baby.

Oh, and #10, the drug dealer. He’s not human. Fry him! :smiley:

What would Brian Boitano do / If he was here right now /
He’d make a plan and he’d follow through / That’s what Brian Boitano would do.

13

So how do you weigh potential vs. track record/self-sufficience?

You say that you’d save the 21-yearr-old college graduate over the 1-year-old baby and I assume that’s because the former has already established a life and started contributing to society. However, many will argue that young children are worth the most because they have the most potential (the obvious retort being that along with the potential for brilliance, there’s the potential for violent psychosis).

Say that we’re talking about a 20-year-old pregnant college student who in one year may be either:

A) A 21-year-old college graduate
B) A 21-year-old dropout on welfare with a 1-year old baby.

In case A, we have a self-sufficient person with ~60 years of potential. In case B, we have two dependent people who are likely to be dependent for a combined ~40 years, and afterwards have a combined ~100 years of potential.

Which of those scenarios is preferable?

14

I don’t any reason why the method of conception has anything to do with a person’s worth. A person is not any less worthy of living just because they have an identical twin or because they were conceived in a test tube. Why would someone’s status as a clone have any factor?

Paul Yeah

15

If we’re talking about desirability, it goes something like this to me (least desirable first):

21
14
6
20
15
7
2
17
8
All the rest

I’ll give a shot at some of your end questions:
Humanity is decided by DNA sequencing.
A person is generally called “human” if they are compassionate and show love toward their fellow men and women.
Life is only sacred if you are that particular lifeform. We are precisely as sacred as a mesquito.
It is OK to chose between two lives when something greater is at stake.
Age and potential certainly makes a difference: the Queen Bee is “worth” countless workers.
If we were chimps, the test chimp’s life would be worth more than the baby human - well, except to PETA.

Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.

16

Hasn’t some fiscal body, perhaps the World Bank or the UN actually answered at least one of these questions?

I recall reading such a report, primarily because the sense of disbelief that they could conclude that a US / Japanese / W. European was “worth” many multiples the worth of an Asian / African is still with me.
As i recall these values were not functions of cash worth, obviously the average american’s life insurance policy is going to be massive compared to the average African’s. These figures were the “value” of a person.

Can’t find a link though…

17

There’s a difference between “human” and “person”. “Human” refers to anything associated with the homo sapiens species. There’s a hair on my desk. It may be “human” and contain human DNA, but it sure as heck isn’t a person. A “person” is a living organism with a thinking brain capable of supporting the high degree of intelligence and emotions that we are familiar with in ourselves. If aliens came and visited us in spaceships, one can imagine them having intelligence and emotions in the same ballpark as our own. They wouldn’t be human but they would be people, so to kill them would be murder. A fetus does not have a thinking brain, therefore it is not a person. As for “sanctity”, that’s a concept that cannot be defined, let alone tested for. It’s purely subjective and therefore cannot be the basis for any law.

18

If it was a UN study it is shocking. If it’s the World Bank it’s not at all surprising. It is their business to put value on everything from infrastructure to human life.

The valuation of human life is a business necessity. If you ran an airliner and had to pick between losing a 767 full of New Yorkers or Guatamalans which would you choose?

Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.

19

That is easy Sake, I would choose to lose the 747 filled with New Yorkers. :wink:

Jeffery

20

The wrongness of murder is not that it takes a human life, but that it is an act of irredeemable coercion.

Coercion is not something that can be eliminated in human interaction; all you can do is acknowledge that the less of it, the better. In the circumstances where it seems necessary and essential, “who you coerce” is often less of a factor in your ethical decision-making than “why you think you must coerce”.

For that reason, I find your question unanswerable as asked. There are circumstances under which I might decide that I have to kill my Mommy. (or, for that matter, vice versa). There are circumstances under which I might have decided that I did not need or want to kill Adolf Hitler even if I had had the opportunity to do so. But under the hypothetical situation where both of these circumstances applied, it does not necessarily follow that my Mom’s life is less sacred than that of Hitler or that she is less of a person, etc.

All of the above holds true for evaluating the life-and-death decisions made by others: it is hard to know how I’d feel about what someone had done until I knew the circumstances under which they had done it, and why.

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