Would you murder an innocent child with your bare hands to cure cancer?

[Shirley Labzentis]

I still think my answer would be the same. I don't believe that I could kill the child. The children are innocent and look up to parents or grown-ups to help them in the world. They can't fend for themselves. Now, look at the people outside the house who have cancer. Some of them did it to themselves. Smoking cigarettes, vaping, chewing tobacco, sunbathing, self-tanning beds, etc. The child was innocent, were they?

[LuckyR]

I still think my answer would be the same. I don't believe that I could kill the child. The children are innocent and look up to parents or grown-ups to help them in the world. They can't fend for themselves. Now, look at the people outside the house who have cancer. Some of them did it to themselves. Smoking cigarettes, vaping, chewing tobacco, sunbathing, self-tanning beds, etc. The child was innocent, were they?

Juvenile detention facilities are full of very guilty children.

[Zanne Crystle]

This reminds me of people asking if I would kill Hitler as a baby to save the Jews. I believe many people answer yes because they realize his very existence will result in something disastrous, a brutal extermination of so many people. When it comes to killing a baby to cure cancer, the "innocent" baby's continued existence has the same result. So, would the baby still be innocent, or would it be equivalent to baby Hitler?

[Nasir Shaikh]

"Would you murder an innocent child with your bare hands to cure cancer?"

Yes, without the slightest hesitation.

Interesting. What about if instead of curing cancer, you would only save five innocent people.

Would you murder one innocent child with your bare hands to save the lives of five innocent people?

It would depend on facts about the five people--their age, how long they're likely to live, etc. (And again "innocence" has nothing to do with it, unless we're talking about whether they're literally guilty of some crime or other.)

Your perspective on innocence makes me rethink my answer. I appreciate how it challenges my thinking. It's interesting to see different viewpoints.

[Sy Borg]

Hi Scott,
No, I could not murder an innocent child. Even though millions of people around the world would be cured of cancer, I would not be able to do it. I could not live with myself, and I would constantly play the scenario repeatedly. I could hear the child begging over and over for their life. No, No, No! I couldn't do it!

Exactly! Once the philosophical proposition moves into the reality of a flesh-and-blood child, forget it. Impossible. I am currently typing with a tiny poodle on my lap. I could not kill that little dog to save any number of people, let alone a pleading, crying kid.

That's why we humans invented buttons, so we can kill many people (and animals) without emotions or mess. Reminiscent of Eminiar VII in Star Trek.

[Nyangor Otieno]

This is a hypothetical question at best and I doubt anyone could ever find themselves having to make such choices. I think some may argue on basis of "the greater good", but it doesn't make the act any less evil. If it was the only way, I wouldn't.

[Good_Egg]

When it comes to killing a baby to cure cancer, the "innocent" baby's continued existence has the same result. So, would the baby still be innocent, or would it be equivalent to baby Hitler?

That's a useful line of thought.

The "would you kill baby Hitler" question presumes time-travel, which does not in practice exist, in order to set up the hypothetical scenario. Most of the time such hypotheticals are useful thought-experiments, no more.

But that hypothetical smuggles in the assumption of determinism, of historical inevitability. That Hitler could not in any future choose other than we know he did. Because we can travel to his future (our past) and see it happen.

With such a worldview, baby Hitler is not innocent - he is an intrinsically-evil soul who is certain to make monstrous non-choices with catastrophic consequences if we let him live to make them.

Using that example as a precedent for killing a genuine innocent - someone who has no responsibility for the fact that their DNA contains something that will cure cancer if we can only get enough of it (which unfortunately requires killing them) - is a false argument.

The other argument we might usefully consider is what happens if we replace certainties with probabilities.

Would you kill baby Hitler if it was only 90% likely that he would grow up to be the man we know from history ? Would you kill a baby if it was only 90% likely that a cure for cancer would result ?

The notion that there is some number that is a tipping point - that the right answer is different according to whether the probability is greater than or less than x% for some value of x - seems indefensible. Except to the out-and-out utilitarians...

[Lagayscienza]

Yes, one of those "utility monsters" which embarass Consequentialists and stem from the difficulty in aggregating utility.

The thing about killing baby Hitler is that you could never know what might have influenced him to make him different if you hadn't travelled back in time to kill him. Just your travelling back in time may have been like the flutter of a butterfly's wings in the Amazon which causes a tornado in Texas. You going back in time may have changed conditions such that he might have turned out ok, or conditions may have been such that he would never have come to power... Chaos makes things unpredictable.

Not too many have responded to the OP question by saying they would kill the baby. However great the benefit there are strong moral intuitions and taboos around killing innocent kids. It seems to go against human nature - for most of us, anyway.

[Hilda Murithi]

No I wouldn't. It take a special kind of darkness and evil to do such a thing. I don't care how much "necessary" doing so is, but I just can't. It doesn't matter what the motivations are either. It's just not humane to.

[Xenophon]

I wouldn't sit next to the guy who formulated this question. He's looking for a rationale to sanction his acting out.

Besides get real: we've got 8 billion or so people destroying the biosphere. It's time to give up the fetish about saving lives. We're like the kid with too many toys. A wise Mom finally says, pick the two or three best and give the rest away. So too with the malodorous Menschenmenge, no?

[Belinda]

I wouldn't sit next to the guy who formulated this question. He's looking for a rationale to sanction his acting out.

Besides get real: we've got 8 billion or so people destroying the biosphere. It's time to give up the fetish about saving lives. We're like the kid with too many toys. A wise Mom finally says, pick the two or three best and give the rest away. So too with the malodorous Menschenmenge, no?

Maybe he's looking for reasons to support his belief that ends don't justify means.

Getting real includes establishing one's moral principles.

The wise person says "choose the good ones". It''s safe to presume nobody want or needs the bad ones.

[Samana Johann]

I prefer the beautiful modest simplicity that is being a man of peace. What about you?

Nobody, not beyond desire for sense pleasure, is a man of peace, good Eckhart, yet it's praiseworthy if one strives for such as long as not argue hypothetical without actually uproot the primarily cause of ill-will and harm.
Further, who has not arrived at the path beyond, is still able to kill even parents, holly man,... not to speak of all crazy things else.

[David awunor]

"I would because 'the ends justify the means,' as famously quoted by Niccolò Machiavelli."

[Belinda]

"I would because 'the ends justify the means,' as famously quoted by Niccolò Machiavelli."

Machiavelli was a politician , a pragmatist who was advising a prince how to rule.