John Rawls had this wonderful thought experiment regarding social justice. Pretend that you're behind a "veil of ignorance" when it comes to your place in a society. You might be rich, poor, minority, majority, LGBTQ, straight, whatever. You don't know. Rawls argued that the society that would emerge would be pretty fair, just out of principles of self-interest: you might be a minority, so you would want minority protections. You might be poor, so you would want some redistribution of wealth to create a social safety net. On the other hand, you might be well off, so you wouldn't want all your wealth taken. And so on.
I think he's right, but there's one area where it would be a disaster, and that would be organ harvesting and medical experimentation. Each person has quite a few useful organs that could be transplanted into a sick person: heart, lungs, kidneys, etc. In addition, the person whose organs are being harvested could ALSO be used for medical research, prior to the organ harvesting, the data of which would benefit everyone. You wouldn't even need that many people to be these chosen few. Probably 10,000 a year would solve the organ shortage problem. And of course provide reams of valuable data. Out of a population of 300+million, there's very good odds it wouldn't be you.
Behind the "veil of ignorance", you wouldn't know if you were one of the unfortunates selected for medical experimentation/organ harvesting, or one of the beneficiaries of a healthy organ/medical data. However, since so many organs can come from one person, and so many would benefit from the knowledge gained from using human test subjects, the odds are greatly on your side that you would be a beneficiary rather than a harvestee. And the benefit is so great (life and death, in some cases), that people behind the "veil of ignorance" might think it's a worthwhile gamble to set up such a system, and hope they're not one of the unlucky ones. After all, the odds are very good they won't be.
So, would people who don't know their position in society set up a system like I described?
I think he's right, but there's one area where it would be a disaster, and that would be organ harvesting and medical experimentation. Each person has quite a few useful organs that could be transplanted into a sick person: heart, lungs, kidneys, etc. In addition, the person whose organs are being harvested could ALSO be used for medical research, prior to the organ harvesting, the data of which would benefit everyone. You wouldn't even need that many people to be these chosen few. Probably 10,000 a year would solve the organ shortage problem. And of course provide reams of valuable data. Out of a population of 300+million, there's very good odds it wouldn't be you.
Behind the "veil of ignorance", you wouldn't know if you were one of the unfortunates selected for medical experimentation/organ harvesting, or one of the beneficiaries of a healthy organ/medical data. However, since so many organs can come from one person, and so many would benefit from the knowledge gained from using human test subjects, the odds are greatly on your side that you would be a beneficiary rather than a harvestee. And the benefit is so great (life and death, in some cases), that people behind the "veil of ignorance" might think it's a worthwhile gamble to set up such a system, and hope they're not one of the unlucky ones. After all, the odds are very good they won't be.
So, would people who don't know their position in society set up a system like I described?
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2GBF2l0
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