The value of life Options

[tkproduce]

A lot of debates seemed to be based on this, so I thought I might make a new topic out of it.

Obviously, life is a valuable thing. But how valuable is it to you? Different people have different opinions.

Say this kid at a school has somehow managed to pick up a fatal disease - maybe something like ebola, but worse. If he is not killed in the next 10 minutes, the disease is contagious enough to infect everyone in the school. You're a doctor with a needle in your hand and you are given the responsibility of making the decision of whether or not to kill this kid. What would you do?

Okay, a very unrealistic situation, but it is slightly similar to other situations. Like the war in Iraq. Do you think the lives of some are worth sacrificing for the welfare of others? The debate about abortion. Letting every foetus with a potential for life to live on, wanted or unwanted, may seem ideal to you, but looking at the big picture, I can see overpopulation and poverty.

So how much do you value individual life?

[tkproduce]

"A single death is a tragedy, a million is just a statistic." -Stalin

I love that quote. It's so true.

Say your dad died with a disease on the same day that a hundred people in a country far away with little connection with you were killed in a terrorist bomb attack. I think 99 out of a 100 people will agree that the death of their own father will feel more tragic to them than the deaths of hundreds of other people that they had no connection with. It's natural human instinct to think that way. I don't like to use this word to describe it, but if we put it simply, humans are selfish. I'm not saying it's wrong. Each one of us can't just go around helping everybody - it's impossible. That's why we help with the people around us. So we value the lives of some more than others.

Nature is goverened by survival of the fittest. Those who cannot survive do not get a chance to reproduce and therefore their genes are not passed on, so only the genes of the "fit" do get passed on. The weak die and the strong survive. However, with humans, maybe we value human life too much. There is a lack of survival of the fittest in the human population compared to the rest of nature. Most people believe that every potential life should be given one.

Hitler tried using the survival of the fittest argument. He thought that getting rid of the unfit - the Jews - will give more space and resources for the "true" Germans to live on. Obviously, this failed to work in the end because humans have feelings and these feelings lead on to "human rights". Feelings are what makes us human, but they may be the means to an end for us species in the end. Overpopulation, leading to a lack of resources, which may result in the end of the human race. Only God knows.