saving lives in a burning building

[White Knight]

and if the girl died? what happens then? you lose both of them.

[Cow of Shame]

[quote name='White Knight' date='Oct 7 2005, 01:52 PM']and if the girl died? what happens then? you lose both of them.
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I'm pretty sure the premise of this highly unlikely scenario is that whoever you chose to take out of the building would survive, regardless of any other extenuating circumstances. WK, a couple of your posts feel like your brain hiccuped in the middle of your writing...take a sec to read over what you've written. It's hard (or nearly impossible) to follow your train of thought.

[quote name='Aloysius']it's very unlikely any of them would survive any attempted implantation (that's why in vitro fertilization is absolutely immoral in the first place)[/quote]

No, it's deemed immoral because you are procreating outside of the sexual act, not because survivability is low. Although, artificially creating life that has a low probability of surviving could be a potentially pursuasive argument for some...

Children outside of the physical union of a husband & wife cheapens sex. And we can already see how cheapened sex is...the reactionist perceptions of Catholics that sex must ONLY be for procreation versus the secular view that it is mostly for recreation. Is it so hard to view it as an emotional & physical joining of the two sides of humanity in love that can lead to the creation of new life?

[Aloysius]

I'd say that makes in-vitro a double-sin.

one- it's a sexual sin against the 6th commandment by cheapening sex.
two- it's a sin against life and agains thte 5th commandment by creating a number of embryos with the intention of only one surviving.

I'd say the murder-sin is higher up than the sexual-sin, but they're both bad.

[Aloysius]

btw, the theology of the body revolution started by JPII should be pretty effective at halting our misguided reactionism, it already worked for me! I can't wait for sex and children and all the great fun that comes with all of that as a whole. it's all one thing, sex and procreation and love and fun and union :

[Cow of Shame]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='Oct 7 2005, 02:44 PM']
two- it's a sin against life and agains thte 5th commandment by creating a number of embryos with the intention of only one surviving.

I'd say the murder-sin is higher up than the sexual-sin, but they're both bad.
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'two' is too much of a blanket statement. Not all couples choose in-vitro fertilization with the intention of only one surviving. I know a couple that decided that how ever many eggs were fertilized (and survived) would be the number of children they would have.

We really can't rank sins, nor should we try. Our judgement is not the same as God's

[Aloysius]

I speak objectively. if they are not culpable for the sin of murder because they didn't intend it, that's their perogative. But the action of creating a bunch of embryos which, by all estimations of science, most won't implant and maybe none will, is objectively an act of creating and ending life.

You're talking about their culpability.

Anyway, sexual sins objectively speaking are lower than sins against the sanctity of life. A person may be less culpable for a sin against life and more culpable for a sexual sin and as such in that subjective case the sexual sin would be worse obviously.

But objectively speaking, we do know of a certain hierarchy of sins.

[Didacus]

The queston is a simple 'number game', and basically equates to:

Woud you save 6 or 1?

The state of the 6 or the 1 does not in any way makes a difference to their worth, nor their chances to live thereafter the incident has passed.

My reply would be:
I would save all 7 if possible, and risk, even give my life while trying. Hence, i'd probably tell the little girl 'hold this' and give her the testubes, and then pick her up and run out. Anything lesser than this option would be a splurt of the moment thing. Whatever the result, I would look upon it as the saving of a few or maybe a 1, not the passing of others.

Thus, my poll reply was: refused to speculate.

On the gorunds that God does not play with numbers. Life is not a question of the many nor the few (now I'm starting to sound like a trekkie!). We do not have the right to choose who is to live or die.

[White Knight]

To throw away a little girls life to save many more lives that actually have a chance to live, thats like insane yes I know this. Many people choose to save the little 6 year old girl. I however say that this topic in general is not devoloped enough at all.


You need a beginning, a middle, and a end. to this problem and solution.

[Winchester]

Girl is a lot more likely to be savable, and is more likely to suffer ill-effects of smoke in the short term. Easy decision.

[White Knight]

This question isn't really detailed enough and has gotten side tracked.

[Socrates]

The whole thing is just a silly rhetorical game.

Pick the girl, and Dairy will say, "See, you admit that a born human being's life is more important than an embryo/fetus's."

Pick the embryos, and she'll say, "See, that proves you Catholics care more about the lives of embryos than of people who are already born!"

[avemaria40]

Have the little girl help carry the testtubes, any good lab would place the tubes in test tube holders. However, since embryos are kept in petri dishes, she could help with those, they're small enough. That way everyone lives, and everyone is happy, both the little girls parents, the parents of the embryos and all ethicists who would have a say in the case

Edited October 7, 2005 by avemaria40

[Cow of Shame]

[quote name='Didacus' date='Oct 7 2005, 03:22 PM']My reply would be:
I would save all 7 if possible, and risk, even give my life while trying.  Hence, i'd probably tell the little girl 'hold this' and give her the testubes, and then pick her up and run out.  Anything lesser than this option would be a splurt of the moment thing. 
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The fact that you had to word your answer like that in order to adequately answer the question just confirms in my mind that the poll was really stupid in the first place.

[Nathan]

The girl. It's a no-brainer to me. If I was in a burning building and there was a little girl in front of me in need of saving, I doubt I would even stop to think for a half-second about sprinking water on embryos.

[dairygirl4u2c]

''you do realize there's little to no chance any of those babies could be implanted and survive...''

 

are you sure that's a fact?

 

it does sideline the inherent point, though, which is the moral one to save and which isn't, if they test tubes could survive?