John Harris The Survival Lottery Utilitarianism

Orion Yeck
John Parsons
Analysis Portion
2-16-15
The Survival Lottery “The Survival Lottery” by philosopher John Harris proposes a new idea on how to handle organ transplants. Let’s consider the following situation: There are two people who are dying of an unavoidable disease. The first patient is called Y and his heart is failing. The second patient is called Z and his lungs are failing. If Y and Z do not receive a new heart and lung they will die. There are no organs available to be donated, and patients Y and Z are not happy that they have to die. Suppose there is another person completely unrelated to both Y and Z who is completely healthy. Let’s call him A. Innocent person A has a healthy heart and working lungs. “The Survival Lottery”

The second is how most other people would probably see it, even those who would consider themselves a utilitarian. Utilitarianism views are meant to make as many people as possible happy. The only way to make the most amounts of people happy would be to kill innocent, healthy A in order to save the dying Y and Z. According to Harris, someone who considers themselves a utilitarian should agree with the survival lottery because it would save the maximum amount of lives. The lottery chooses a healthy person to kill, but in return saves two other lives. In reality, most people, even those who would say that they believe in utilitarianism, would not agree with the lottery system. It would bring about many questions as to who would be considered healthy enough for the lottery, who would decide whether or not an unhealthy organ was the person’s fault, and what age would be considered too

Harris suggests that Y’s good lungs be used to save Z or to use Z’s good heart to save Y. In this situation, only one person would die. The overall happiness would be greater in the entire situation because even though one person is still dying, no outside person would be involved. It is the same amount of death, but it involves less people. However, this is still unfair to whichever person dies. “The Survival Lottery” suggests that patients Y’s and Z’s numbers be thrown into the lottery. They are going to die eventually, so their numbers should also be put into the lottery. Harris raises the counter point that some people would not believe that people should be categorized. They would say that it is morally wrong to put the patients into a sub-class as if their life is not as important as others. A utilitarian would have to believe this because it results in the most happiness. This is also the fairest way to decide who is in the lottery. It does not call on an innocent person to sacrifice his life and make more people unnecessarily