John Harris Survival Lottery

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Just What, If Anything, Is Wrong with Harris’ Proposal of The Survival Lottery?
The Survival Lottery (John Harris, 1975) is an example of a society being governed with a utilitarian philosophy behind it, with the purpose to live in a society where the majority of people will prosper. Harris’ Survival Lottery explains that organ donation should be an obligation of every human being, and that when selected randomly in a lottery, people are required to sacrifice their life so that their organs can be harvested and used to save the lives of two or more people who are in need of a transplant to save their lives. Harris’ justification for this is that there is no difference between killing one healthy person and allowing two ill people to die because they are both equally as innocent as the healthy person; it was just chance that they fell ill. Harris importantly excluded any people with self-inflicted diseases or illnesses such as liver failure due to excessive alcohol consumption from the lottery.
In this essay I will explain why J.S.Mill’s branch of Utilitarianism, often referred to as Rule Utilitarianism, supports Harris’ idea of a survival lottery. However I will then reject this proposal of Utilitarianism because it devalues the sanctity of human life by treating people as a “means to an end” which I believe to be …show more content…

I believe that it is immoral to tell someone they are going to die in order to save a certain number of other people because in doing this it is devaluing human life considering people are losing their right of life and self-defence. Furthermore, this extreme style of control over a population in my opinion will lead to a loss in individuality of people as they may become more susceptible to negative thoughts as they may fell they are being used like a cog in a

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