June 23, 2007

Ethics Question #1

In the field of medicine, Doctors run into tough ethics issues that have to be handled quickly. So I thought I would post ethics questions of different scenarios and ask what you would do in the situation.

You are driving down a road in the middle of nowhere in a very bad storm. And you see three people on the side of the road. One is your best friend, who in the past has saved your life. The second person is a very old woman, of which you do not know. And third is the love of your life. You only have room in the car for one passenger (no cheating here, you can't put people in the trunk, or have people hold onto the roof, or anything like that, you cant rotate the people every x feet...this storm is so bad that if you take more than 1 min to make your decision the car is trapped in the storm ). And since you are in the middle of nowhere no one has cell reception, and there is only enough gas in the car to make one trip out of the storm, which will take 12 hours to get out of.

So the question is "what do you do?"
It should also be noted that the people in the car will get out of the storm alive, but this storm is very bad and the people left behind may not survive.
Also the car has to leave the storm or else the people in the car will die.

** I will post, what I would of done (by no means the "right" thing) in a couple of days so people can say what they would do with no outside influence :)

3 comments:

avlis said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
avlis said...

Hi!
Have a nice day with your beloved wife.
Your Ethics Question is, indeed, a very interesting question. I would say, even more, an embarrassing question.
Although, it looses weight considering the pressure and the lack of time to take a decision. Under such hard situation I do believe that nobody would act considering and evaluating all the different kind and strengh of feelings that are felt at that time.
Having no time to think, the decision is dictated by the suden and the stronger desire of keeping alive the love of one's life.
That's it!

arnaldo silva
fortunately retired

June 23, 2007 12:06 PM

The Humanity Critic said...

That's a hard one, I guess my answer would be my best friend.