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Recommended: Ethics of organ donation

In the hope of increasing overall wellbeing, John Harris proposes the creation of a survival lottery. Such a lottery would provide much needed organs to two or more patients, who would die otherwise, at the cost of one randomly selected person's life. Harris' main reasoning for supporting the adoption of such a lottery, is that doing so would cut the number of deaths in half and thereby cut the suffering that comes from loss of life in half. This could effectively reduce overall suffering and maximize happiness. I will review Harris' arguments for this lottery, and also introduce several other possible arguments that may be made, for or against it, from utilitarian and kantian perspectives. I also intend to prove that the introduction of such a lottery, for the given reasons given by Harris, would be irrational and self-contradictory.
John Harris introduces several strong utilitarian arguments for the adoption of a survival lottery. Many utilitarians will be of the opinion that something is morally right if it maximizes the happiness and decreases the suffering of the greatest amount of people, when compared to other options available. In the event that we should consider every life equally valuable, an idea that is upheld by many today, a utilitarian would claim that the death of one would bring about more overall wellbeing than the deaths of more than one. Harris' main argument for the survival lottery follows this ideal, pointing out that if one person should be sacrificed to save two, overall happiness could be increased. Giving credit where it is due, Harris is very modest in his proposal that one organ donor could save the lives of two who would die without a transplant. In actuality, the organs from one person may save th...

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...ck units with call numbers. If these victims are viewed as items to be used, they are not viewed as humans, therefore their lives hold no value. To implement a device for the purpose of preserving valuable lives of humans, while the very means by which it does so strips the value from those lives is self-contradictory.
Overall, Harris has many excellent points why a survival lottery would be optimific. In addition to the feeling of wrongness that many would get from just considering a survival lottery, there are flaws in the arguments made in favor of this lottery. The very idea of offering one to save two is a very interesting one, and simply exchanging one life for two might increase overall happiness. However, the supporting reasons for putting such a lottery in place, and the means by which it would be done, make his argument irrational and selfcontradictory.

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