In “The Survival Lottery,” John Harris tries to defend the idea of using an advanced computer that chooses people at random for doctors to kill, so the doctors can use those organs to save other lives (1975, p. 261). To many, a “survival lottery” will sound Orwellian, almost like a world with artificial intelligence gone terribly wrong. But, to Harris, the survival lottery is a logical tool that society can use to harvest organs and save many, many lives.
Here is the question that stands as the cornerstone of this system’s ethical status: Can you proactively kill one person to save others? Can you do what would otherwise be a crime just because it helps more people than it hurts? Is the individual totally worthless relative to the masses?
For John Harris, the answer to all of these questions is an empathic, “Yes!” He thinks it is dishonest to frame the individual as innocent and the masses as guilty. Perhaps the individual is losing his life even though he is totally innocent, but the masses are just as innocent, too (Harris 1975, p. 260). They are victims of diseased organs, and they do not have less of a right to live than the individual or more of a reason to die.
To Harris, the question is not, “Should we kill one innocent man?” Rather, the question is, “Should we kill one innocent man, or should we kill two?” A critic may counter: “Are you really killing them because you cannot give them the organ transplants that they need? Surely there is a difference between letting someone die and intentionally killing them.” But Harris disagrees. He says that “if the doctors, and for that matter society at large, ought on balance to kill one man if two can thereby be saved, then failure to do so will involve responsibility for the consequent deaths” (Harris 1975, p. 260). In both cases, the effect is exactly the same: at least one innocent person must die. That is the only difference, and for the utilitarian, the only question is, “How many?”
Of course, to our antiquated and consumption-driven world that cannot understand the meaning of “altruism,” this lottery system will seem Orwellian. Yet here is what Harris says:
Suppose that inter-planetary travel revealed a world of people like ourselves, but who organized their society according to this scheme. No one was considered to have an absolute right to life or freedom from interference, but everything was always done to ensure that as many people as possible would enjoy long and happy lives (1975, p. 261).
What would we think? Maybe their world would seem intimidating to live in, but Harris says, at the very least, we would have to respect their society (1975, p. 261).
Naturally, critics can raise a number of rebuttals against this system. They can say that it would give the people too much of a quasi-Draconian terror, or that it would violate individual rights, or that it would give the people who control the machine too much power to “play God,” or that there is a moral difference between killing someone and letting them die, or that forcing one person to kill himself in order to save others would violate his rights to self-defense. But with all of these rebuttals, Harris has answers (1975, p. 262). First, no one should actually be scared of the system because the probability of their name being called by the lottery system is so microscopically small. Second, the individual whose life is sacrificed does not have greater individual rights than the people who need his or her organs. Third, the idea that this system will cause people to “play God” more than they already do ignores the realities of the real world. By choosing to save the individual and let the masses die, they are already playing God. Fourth, the moral dichotomy between killing someone and letting them die is totally fictitious because there is exactly the same outcome in both cases. Fifth, if everyone has an absolute right to self-defense, then the masses also have a right to do what they have to do in order to survive.
Personally, I am not a utilitarian. Although much of his argument is logically sound, I reject the premises. As a Christian who believes in the divine-command paradigm of ethics, I reject the idea that a killer’s intention plays no role in the moral value of his actions just because the outcome is the same. Deuteronomy 19:4-6 is clear that there is a moral difference between intentional murder and unintentional manslaughter. Nevertheless, John Harris presupposes a utilitarian ethical paradigm when he makes this argument. This is what he says about rejecting an organ-harvesting lottery system on biblical grounds: “[W]e delude ourselves if we suppose that the reason why we reject [the] plan is that we accept the sixth commandment” (Harris 1975, p. 266).
Reference
Harris, J. (1975). The survival lottery. In Russ Schafer-Landau (Ed.), The ethical life: Fundamental readings in ethics and moral problems, 4th Ed, (pp. 258-266). Oxford University Press.
Asher Sisneros 