Prompt: What to do??? — A foray into ethics

Prompt subject: Philosophy
Prompt author: Xan “Chaos” Englehart
Prompt cycle: November 3-9 @ 23:59 GMT+0

You’re walking down a street and you see a middle-aged woman collapse about 300 feet away, at the crosswalk up ahead. You are a trained and certified EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) and know what you can do to help her. However, you are off duty and are not under the liability umbrella of the medical director at the hospital where you work. Legally, you are not bound to help this woman, but what about ethically?

Analyze this situation from an ethical standpoint. Remember that you might be charged with assault/manslaughter if anything happens to the patient. Hell, she might even press sexual harassment charges!? (Don’t say we didn’t warn you, Count Mein…) You might do something that you thought was right, but ended up hurting her more. She might have a DNR order (“Do Not Recuscitate”) that you’re violating. A lot of things could go wrong, but a lot of things could go right. So what should you do?

For those who never learned or don’t remember Ethical Decision-Making from Mr. Jason Friend, read on…

The major schools of ethical thought are as follows:

• Utilitarianism: what’s best for the greatest number of people is the right thing (as Dwyer says, “It is the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people that is the true judge of what is morally right and wrong.”)
• Moral Rights: everyone is born with unalienable rights that cannot be taken away under any circumstances, nor by any government or law. Arguably most important of these is the right to choose for oneself, closely followed by the right to life and the right to know the truth.
• Justice Ethics: addresses fairness in distribution (who gets treated how and who gets what), retribution (who gets punished and how/how much), compensation (if you get treated unfairly, do you get something in return and what/how much do you get).
• Categorical Imperative: if everyone did this action in this kind of situation, would it be bad? For example, if everyone stuck their gum on the bottoms of desks, would it be bad? Yes. All the desks in the world would be stuck full of gum. (It’s like WWJD but WWTROTWD — what would the rest of the world do?)
• Golden Mean: the right thing to do lies in the middle path between two extremes. If an action/situation lies too far in one direction, one must do the extreme opposite to compensate and pull back into the middle (that’s a bit confusing, so just remember that it’s the middle path).

Not all of these are necessarily applicable to the subject at hand. Also, please excuse these very brief explanations that most definitely don’t do justice to the philosophers who originally wrote on these subjects.

For more reading/research: Utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mills), Moral Rights (Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Thomas Paine), Justice Ethics (John Rawls… I think), Categorical Imperative (Immanuel Kant), Golden Mean (Aristotle)