Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save

In Peter Singer’s work, “The Life You Can Save,” he presents the famous scenario of a child drowning in a shallow pond. This scenario presents readers with the question of whether they would save a child from a life or death situation at a certain cost. After encouraging his readers to develop an answer, he creates an analogy between the presented scenario and the act of donating to a life-saving charity. Singer argues that the two scenarios are ethically similar and that if you would save the child in the pond, then you should be donating to charity without question; however, his argument comes with some faults. The shallow pond case and the charity case are ethically dissimilar due to differences in costs, direct versus indirect contributions,

and saving a life rather than slightly prolonging it.
In order to truly save and improve lives in third world countries donators would have to spend great amounts of money that would add up to much more than the cost of a new outfit and a new pair of shoes that is lost when saving the child in the pond. Singer even states himself that, “it takes more than the amount needed to buy a pair of shoes [to save a life],” invalidating the comparison of the two scenarios and preventing us from determining the ethical similarity between the two simply because the costs are not the same. (Singer, 11) To effectively use the analogy, you would have to equalize the costs of each scenario. You must take into consideration the situational factors of potential donators, because $1 is not always of the same value to the lives of two different people. You can’t judge a person’s ethical character by whether they donate to a charity until you know their life situation in its entirety. Consider the saying, you must help yourself before you can help others; we all must put ourselves first sometimes so that we can get a good education and enough food on the table before we can consider donating and helping others. If you have enough money to splurge on a nice pair of shoes, then you should have enough money to donate to a life-saving charity. However, if you only have enough money to buy one nice pair of shoes that allow you to earn respect at work and enable you to keep a steady income, then you should not be judged as unethical for not donating the money rather than spending it. That one pair of shoes is of much more value to the American who needs to earn respect at work than it is to the American who just wanted to splurge on a new pair, so we cannot weigh the ethics in this particular case. Furthermore, the two scenarios in Singer’s analogy have dissimilar costs, so they cannot be judged as ethically similar.
Another fault that is clear in Singer’s analogy is the difference of direct versus indirect contributions in the two scenarios. Seeing a child drowning in a shallow pond is a situation where you directly save a life, therefore the benefits completely outweigh the costs right in front of your eyes. When donating to a charity you don’t know exactly where the money goes and cannot guarantee that the money you donate is truly being beneficial to people in need. Giving a donation is an indirect contribution to possibly saving a life. When donating to a charity, we have no control on how to spend that money, we just pass it off and hope for the best. Donators don’t ordinarily get to see the outcome, whereas in saving a drowning child, we know exactly what the outcome is and that we truly did save a life. This outlines the inequality between the two scenarios in Singer’s analogy, because the types of contributions are not the same. Having a clear and direct outcome makes a person feel secure in the fact that the cost is worth it, whereas having an unclear and indirect outcome makes a person feel insecure and unsure about the worth of the cost.
In the case of preventing the death of a child drowning in a shallow pond, you are guaranteed to save a life that has the potential to be long and healthy.

Conversely, in the case of preventing the death of a child in a third world country by donating to a charity, you are more likely prolonging a life for a short period of time rather than truly saving it. Donating money that will be put towards, for example, a malaria net, may prevent someone from passing away due to one illness but it will not give them an education and it will not save them from famine or distress. The donation will only save people in great poverty from one of their many struggles. In the biography “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” Tracy Kidder discusses Paul Farmer’s establishment of the nonprofit, Partners in Health, that obtains donations to its charitable cause from large companies and organizations. These companies and organizations are well-established foundations that can give an amount of money great enough to potentially make a difference and save lives through health care. Nonetheless, even with these great amounts of money, one of Farmer’s patients, John, gets all the medical help possible yet dies anyway. This saddening story exemplifies the point that when donating you cannot guarantee that a life will be saved. The best medical care possible could not save John, so even the best help we can give through charity may not save the people in need. There are many struggles in third-world countries

that can take the lives of the people that inhabit them. Donating a small amount to one charity only saves a life from a single struggle, while they could be currently suffering from multiple other death causing struggles. When saving a drowning child in a developed country, the child is more likely to be saved and live a healthy life for many years to come. The outcomes of the two scenarios vary greatly, so Singer’s analogy cannot be validated. The scenarios are not ethically similar because one guarantees that a life will be saved, while the other does not.
We cannot use Singer’s analogy to determine the ethics of a person, but we can acknowledge the fact that trying to save a life is always ethical.

Farmer’s amazing outlook exemplifies this highly ethical characteristic of being a hero. In the biography, “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” It is made clear that he believes that it is still imperative that we always do what we can to at least attempt to save, or improve, lives. “In his mind, he was fighting all poverty all the time, an endeavor full of difficulties and inevitable failures.” (Singer, 210) Paul Farmer’s devotion to people in need is extremely admirable and is an ethical trait that he exhibits in all aspects of his life, but we can’t all be as saint like as Paul Farmer. As a Harvard doctor, Paul Farmer is, in a way, more capable of saving lives with the use of medical care than most people are. A simple and small contribution such as $200, or the equivalent to the cost of a pair of shoes, is much less effective than a direct contribution of highly expensive medical supplies and supplements. Singer’s analogy does not succeed in showing that the shallow pond case and the charity case are ethically similar, because the two scenarios have unequal costs, impacts, and outcomes. Not all charities are truly life-saving, but pulling a child out of a pond and into safety is. Although we should all do what we can to help others and essentially “cure the world,” we cannot judge one’s ethical character poorly if they do not donate

to a charitable cause.