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date: 07 October 2024

trolley problem. 

Source:
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy
Author(s):
Sarah RichmondSarah Richmond

Suppose you are driving a trolley whose brakes have failed. Ahead of you five people are standing on the track. But here the track forks, and on the alternative path one person stands. Is it morally permissible, or even required, to divert the trolley to save the five from death, at the cost of one? Most people's intuition is that this is at least morally permissible. Why, then, do we not think it permissible for a surgeon, in urgent need of five different organs to save five patients, to kill a healthy patient to procure them?... ...

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