Ask Not For Whom The Alarm Sounds

No human group has a monopoly on sophistry. The tendency to rationalize what we want to do but know is wrong is universal among humans.

It’s no suprise, then, to find

THIS STORY FROM ISRAEL.

According to it, a new law will go into effect next year that will hook timers up to people’s respirators. The timers will be equipped with (though the paper doesn’t call it that) a dead-man switch.

No really!

Periodically an alarm will sound, and if you DON’T override the alarm then it will turn off the respirator and the patient will be euthanatized. (That’s why it’s a dead-man switch. You’ve got to keep interacting with it or the device changes it’s behavior. Normally dead-man switches are used for fail-safe purposes, but in this case it’s being used for a fail-deadly purpose, making the name "dead-man" bitterly appropriate.)

The reason for this rigamarole is to circumvent the "Thou shalt not kill" (or "Thou shalt not murder") requirement. Certain strands of Jewish religious law forbid taking the life of a patient, and so a system has been devised to allow a machine to do the killing instead of a person.

It’s a way of having your euthanasia and eating it, too.

It’s also pure and simple rationalization.

It doesn’t eliminate the immorality of the homicide, it just changes the mode by which the homiciders do their work. Instead of them directly flipping a switch to kill the patient, they first install an egg timer on his life and then they refuse to re-set the egg timer. That doesn’t get around the problem.

Sure, the person who installs the egg timer can say, "Hey, I’m not killing him. I’m just setting up this egg timer." And then the person who refuses to re-set it can say, "Hey, I’m not killing him. I’m just not re-setting that egg timer."

But the situation is the same as if the first person wheeled the patient into an air-tight room and said, "Hey, I’m not killing him; he’s got some air in here for a while" and the second saying, "Hey, I’m not causing him to suffocate; I’m just not opening the door to let in more air."

Or, if you prefer a little more science-fiction in your example, it’s like one person setting up a GIANT KILLDROID in the patient’s room and another person refusing to keep hitting the DO NOT KILL switch on the KILLDROID.

I’m sorry, but these folks’ actions would STILL amount to homicide.

Nevertheless, I could see this kind of rationalization being used in the U.S. someday. Israel just got there first.

I do want to briefly treat something else the article mentions, though, that is more specifically Jewish: It mentions Sabbath timers. These are the same kind of timer (i.e., they activate if you don’t hit the dead-man switch), only they are used to do things like turn lights in a house ON during the Sabbath (rather than turning respirators OFF) since in some circles it is considered breaking the Sabbath to turn the lights on.

That’s TOTALLY DIFFERENT morally, and I want to point that out.

Now, I don’t agree with the severe interpretation of God’s law that would constitute flipping on a light switch as work and thus a violation of the Sabbath. Neither do I mind that there is someone at the power station who has to work on the Sabbath. Even the priests work on the Sabbath, and guys at the power plant is one of those functions that needs doing (whether you have a droid turning on your lights or not). It’s like if your sheep falls in a pit on the sabbath, it’s okay to get him out. (NOTE: Sheep do this ALL the time. They’re REALLY dumb and helpless.)

But there is a BIG DIFFERENCE between having a droid turn on you lights on the Sabbath and having a droid kill your patient.

The point of Sabbath legislation (however it is interpreted) is not to keep you from having light but to keep you from working so that you can rest. Doing the labor to set up a lightswitch droid on Thursday does not cause you to do work on the Sabbath. You get to rest when you’re s’pposed to and you work when you’re s’pposed to. You’re just doing a little extra work to make your rest more enjoyable.

But the point of anti-killing legislation IS to keep people from being killed, and so setting up a killdroid on your patient’s respirator DOES violate the purpose for which the legislation is given.

There’s thus a big difference between morally between using a killdroid and using a lightswitch droid–and not just in the gravity of the actions they perform (killing someone being a lot worse than turning on lights) but in the morality of SETTING THEM UP IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I didn’t want the mention of Sabbath timers to confuse this as a uniquely Jewish issue. Medical killdroids are just wrong no matter who is using them as part of a "La, la, la, la; I’m not killing you; la, la, la, la" gambit.

NOTE: For simplicity’s sake I have not broached the question of how the Jewish Sabbath relates to Sunday and what Christians are allowed to do on Sunday. Neither have I broached the question of whether the person on the respirator is required to be on the respirator in the first place. I’m assuming that the use of the respirator IS morally required in a particular case for getting at the morality of using a killdroid to shut it off. In other cases its use may not be morally required, in which case no killdroid would be needed to shut it off morally. That’s a separate debate that I didn’t want to have here.