"You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you."I'll admit, when I first came across this, I thought that this guy has a point! The idea here is that while it would be a nice thing if you allowed yourself to be hooked up to the violinist, you're not obligated to do so as the violinist doesn't in fact have any right to use your kidney.
The relation is then made to a baby in the womb. When a mother chooses to carry the child, it would fall under that category of, "that was nice of her." and if she chooses to abort, it's simply her exercising her right to her own body (i.e., the baby/fetus doesn't have any rights to the woman's womb). This example aims to show that while it would be sad to see the child die, it wouldn't be an immoral choice. I heard about this thought experiment and I admit it has its merits as it is true that no one other than the person can be compelled to use their body or part of their body (even temporarily) to help another person out. In this case, it would be morally acceptable to unplug the violinist even if it meant certain death.
Where it fails, however, is to account for how the actions of the individual making the choice. You see, the act described above would more closely be related to a rape than anything else. Abortion due to rape is very slim (around 1-2% of all cases) and as such, we cannot base policy on a small chunk of the pie.
A more apt thought experiment would involve prior knowledge on the part of the individual whose kidney is being used. Say, for example, I knew that by visiting the Society of Music Lovers theme park, that there was a slim chance that (from the act of visiting the park) I could wake up the next morning with a famous violinist hooked up to my kidney. This changes the perspective a bit.
In this case, we have me, participating in an activity which could cause someone else to need my body in order to live. In other words, I had caused someone to require my body to live. Would it be acceptable still to unplug them?
Maybe that's something to think about.
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