The Survival Lottery By John Harris Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The selection Lottery By John Harris - Essay ExampleHarris also assumes that no organs are available from the already dead so as to produce the ethical choice sharp and clear.Lastly ,an obvious assumption is that the transplantation technology has achieved the status of ensuring complete success and that adverse individual would live after the transplant.If organ donation was perfect and there was no difference between run throughing and letting die. Then we should adopt the pick Lottery. The proposition by John Harris can be seen as an argument against Utilitarianism, although Harris himself often makes Utilitarian claims in his work.Let us adopt the famous exemplar of Harris viz. that of three persons A,Y & Z.A is strong and is potential target for organ transplant and Y & Z are both terminally ill and can be saved by organ(s) donation from A and subsequent 100% successfully done transplant(s). Simply speaking why not kill A to make Y and Z surviveOr should we allow Y and Z to perish.There are two arguments against letting Y and Z perish.One is the Utilitarian argument and the other the Fairness argument. The agent says that we should do that which will have the best consequences and it is a better consequence if more people live. Therefore even if we intentionally kill a sun-loving person, doing so will save at least two unhealthy persons who otherwise would have died, more people will live thanif we refuse to kill the healthy person. So, we ought to intentionally kill a healthy person when doing so will save at least two unhealthy persons who would have died otherwise. The last mentioned argument says that we should not unfairly decide to kill anybody-it has to be on a fair basis.If we refuse to kill A then we have presumptively decided to kill Y and Z and vice versa.Therefore an outright decision not to kill A ought not to be taken.Survival lottery proposition sequence agreeing with utilitarian argument that more lives are better than one sugge sts a fair basis to select the person to be killed from the available lot of healthy people viz.through random lottery.Arguments Against the Survival Lottery The Survival Lottery would undermine our security, something which all desire reasonably. The Survival Lottery fails to respect individuality because it treats A, Y, and Z merely as interchangeable units. The Survival Lottery involves playing God with mens lives. The Survival Lottery involves us in cleanup spot, whereas refusing to practice the Survival Lottery only involves us in letting die. And killing is worse than letting die. The Survival Lottery is inconsistent with recognizing that every person has a fundamental right to self-defense. Harriss argument is based on the maximizing lives theory, as he believes there is value in numbers and that two lives are twice as valuable as one. As a consequentialist it does not point to Harris how the