Kill One Million People Or The Man Who Will Cure Cancer?
The title might be a little misleading and I'm sorry about that, I guess I'm just a shit person.
The actual dilemma is "Would you rather kill one million people and then have a cure for cancer invented or would you save those one million people and kill the man who cures cancer. The catch being that, if you kill the single man, a cure for cancer will never be invented."
Also, don't start that "Well, if one man could cure cancer then surely another could. This situation is stupid" crap. This is not about advances is medicine, this is about a moral dilemma.
Kill One Million
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Kill Man Who Cures Cancer
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I'll kill the one million people. Curing cancer isn't a huge thing. It depends on where you are. It doesn't mean that more people will die if those who are cured of cancer lives. I mean, imagine people before established hospitals and medical advancement? "Stop the Establishment of Hospitals and Medical Advancement, which is rumored to come true in the future, or?" Side: Kill One Million
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In reality, I would kill neither. Simply because I really don't feel I have the chutzpah to kill someone. So I suppose I'd just pick the one with less direct (emphasised) moral consequence. Even though I don't really believe in all that shiz. or do I? hmm, I dunno man... Side: Kill Man Who Cures Cancer
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Sorry to be "that guy" but I find a lot of flaws to this question. Who are the million people? Are they randomly selected or are we killing of only the ones we choose. How do we know one of those people does not cure AIDS for example. I also think its a little ridiculous to suggest a cure for cancer is found by one single person, and that without them no one could figure it out. They have to be basing their experiments off some kind of know data or idea. Side: Kill Man Who Cures Cancer
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"Also, don't start that "Well, if one man could cure cancer then surely another could. This situation is stupid" crap. This is not about advances is medicine, this is about a moral dilemma." Dude. Did you read what the guy said? It's just a question to think about, don't start being all realistic about it. Of course not only one man would have the cure for cancer. Side: Kill One Million
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Okay that's true sorry for bring in that statement, though I think it does show a larger moral point. There is almost never a person who is valuable alone. Great ideas or people are made by others therefore it is more detrimental to kill a large society of people then the one person who is a product of the million who came before them. Side: Kill One Million
I would much rather kill the man who cures cancer. Many of you are looking at this the wrong way. Such as natural disasters, Cancer is another way to keep control of the population. In the world there are people starving every day due to lack of food. Overpopulation is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous than cancer. We've all seen the commercials with a starved African child because of his poor living conditions. That doesn't only happen in 3rd world countries. Overpopulation is a plague to large cities even in America. Approximately 7.6 million people in the [b]world[/b] die from cancer each year. Approximately 4 million births are in the [b]US[/b] alone. According to http://www.wholesomewords.org, there are 131.4 million births in the entire [b]world[/b]. Compare that to the number of deaths? 55.3 million people in the world die each year. The birth:death rate ratio is over 2.0. The math and facts show it. If you take away one of the main threats of a human life the world itself can't stand a longer life span. Side: Kill Man Who Cures Cancer
While I agree that overpopulation is currently an issue, I refuse to believe it's an insurmountable one, and the only solution is to kill people (indirectly) by not creating a cure for cancer. Indeed, the world as it is now cannot support the number of people that are being added to the planet every day. There are two variables you're not considering here: that the world as it is now is the only world we will ever have, and that the birth to death ratio will remain the same until the end of [our] time. Addressing the second point first, as nations become more well off, they have less progeny (example, my mother is the youngest of 11 children, born in Haiti. Her an her siblings moved to the US, and all 11 have had less than 2 kids each) . As time goes on, the birth to death ratio will slow, since 3rd world countries will become more advanced giving us more time to work on issue number one: how do we all survive together. I don't have a direct answer to this, but if we all put our minds to it, I guarantee we will find a solution. Anything from putting cities on oceans, growing food on building tops in cities, more efficient agriculture, more effective trading between countries. Never mind that we'll have an extra 7+ million people working to solve the problem. Saying that we've got a problem, and we don't know what the answer is, so rather than try to solve the problem, lets let 7+ million people die every day, needlessly is lazy and shortsighted. That said, taking the premise of the question (which is bogus) to be true, it's easy to become emotionally bogged down by the 1 million that you'd be killing, but truth of the matter is, you'd be killing 7 times that every year if you killed just the one man. Not saying I could pull the trigger one million times, but it's the right thing to do, from a societal standpoint. "It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong." - Jeremy Bentham Side: Kill One Million
I will go right back to my point of overpopulation. You're wanting to find the answer on how we can live together, and the answer to that is you can't. It's a fight in the world and you must do what you can to win. If you simply take away a good 7.6 million people it will make a dent, a microscopic one at that, but at least a dent in the rapid growing population. In the next 50 years, the world will have to produce more food than it has had to produce in the last 10,000 years combined. I'm not saying I am happy letting 7 million people die. But what is the point of killing one million people for creating a cure that will only hurt us? Even if there was a cure, it would create a damage on their life span (most likely). Side: Kill Man Who Cures Cancer
Overpopulation depends on the country and specific area. Why should people who are already living die? This is similar to the other debate. If you would be willing to murder a bunch of people (referencing other debate), why not make forced birth control legal in countries with a problem? What's worse, forcing people to not produce as much, or causing other people to die? You don't have to let a bunch of people die to save the world from dying or anything. Starved Africans seem to be a result of low resources rather than the population... but in that case, yeah, there should be less people. Side: Kill One Million
Death is a fact, one that people treat like a taboo. People shy away from it and fear it, and no one knows anything about it. Call me fatalistic, but I think things should stay as they are, disaster, disease, death- all of it. It's natural and makes room for the next generation of people with new ideas. Ever read The Declaration or The Resistance by Gemma Malley? Side: Kill Man Who Cures Cancer
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Cancer is a natural disease, and killing an assortment of random people, children included, would be disgusting. Killing one person- would be less terrible. 7.6 million people die from cancer, and about 100 000 of those children. There would be no humane way to go about this question, and the scenario is extremely unlikely. Side: Kill Man Who Cures Cancer
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