You are standing at the switching station on a train track; you have the option of making the train go either right or left. The train is moving too quickly to stop before you guide it on its eventual path. On the right track, one man is tied up; on the left, five men are tied up. If the train goes to the right, the one man dies; if it goes to the left, all five men die. Which way do you direct the train?
Although it is tough to let one man die, it seems reasonable to let him perish in order to save the five on the other track. Killing one to save five is much better than killing five to save one. (unless the one man possesses the cure for cancer while the five are all serial killers, this is not the case though, in this hypothetical, all six men are identical.)
Now here's a slightly different dilemma:
You are a doctor in a hospital. In five rooms, you have five men who need five different organ transplants. They will all die without the transplant in the next day and there are no available organs to give to them. There is a sixth man who is capable of giving his organs to each of the five men, letting them live, but killing the donor. Do you kill the man to save the other five?
Instinctively no. But is the situation much different, or any different, than the train track scenario? What separates them?
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