Here is the piece I wrote discussing taking a life v. saving a life....is it worth it for one person? Click the image below to find out!
With
$557.1 billion in Afghanistan-related budget items (the
true cost in the trillions);
10,000 Afghani civilian and
2, 441 coalition deaths later, the man that we have been hunting, Osama Bin Laden, is finally dead. But was the death of this one man worth it? Could the resources and money have resulted in greater good if spent differently? Could the money have been better spent in creating an infrastructure and promoting education and sustainable development?
Another way to look at the issue is to consider the amount of money spent on saving the life of one individual. The National Park Systemspends approximately
$5 million each year on search and rescue operations to save lives (not including the many hours spent in searching or other related expenses). Some individual rescues operations may cost up to
$7,600 per hour. Would this money be better used to extend the lives of many dying of heart disease yearly?
The larger question, what value can we place on one life or one death, and at whose expense? As Tony Hope, Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Oxford, has argued: “Deaths are not less significant because we cannot put a face or a name to the person whose life could have been saved…The lesson we should learn from our empathy for those in need of rescue is to widen our moral imaginations. We rightly respond to the person in distress by being prepared to spend money to save a life. We should respond in the same way to prevent ‘statistical’ deaths, for such deaths are real and people and the friends and relatives who are left behind mourn in just the same way.”
[1] With this lesson in mind, healthcare professionals and even military officials should learn to explore alternative solutions taking into account the value of lives that cannot so easily be identified.
[1] Hope T. Medical Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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