That was going to be my next thought experiment! :-) It's usually paired with a similar scenario, like the runaway trolley scenarios are:
You're in a hospital and six mortally injured people come in for treatment. One is much more seriously injured than the rest. If you save that person, the other five will die for lack of treatment. If you treat the other five, then you won't have time to save the one. Who do you treat?
As in the trolley experiment, most of us would choose to treat the five and let the one die -- but most of us would NOT choose to kill the perfectly healthy person to harvest organs for the other five. In both thought experiments, though the net result is the same (five deaths vs. one) each scenario feels very different.
In this one, though, the act/omission distinction is even more clear. Most of us find a big difference between allowing a mortally injured person to die and actually killing a healthy person.
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You're in a hospital and six mortally injured people come in for treatment. One is much more seriously injured than the rest. If you save that person, the other five will die for lack of treatment. If you treat the other five, then you won't have time to save the one. Who do you treat?
As in the trolley experiment, most of us would choose to treat the five and let the one die -- but most of us would NOT choose to kill the perfectly healthy person to harvest organs for the other five. In both thought experiments, though the net result is the same (five deaths vs. one) each scenario feels very different.
In this one, though, the act/omission distinction is even more clear. Most of us find a big difference between allowing a mortally injured person to die and actually killing a healthy person.