FlamingText

Ethics 101: Simple Moral Arithmetic

   I’m not sure how it started. Might’ve been an electrical problem, or maybe somebody was smoking in one of the restricted areas where we keep the bottled oxygen, or maybe – but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up. First you should understand some basic details about the lab.

  The work we do here is for couples who want to be parents but for some reason can’t conceive the old-fashioned way. They need a little help at the fertilization phase, or what I refer to as the “ensoulment phase.” And I’m sure you’re at least somewhat familiar with how that works, that we take some ova that we’ve removed from the mother’s ovaries and we place them in a solution with the correct temperature and salinity to which we've already added a sperm sample from the father --usually about 75,000 sperm per every ovum. After eighteen hours we take all the successfully ensouled little people and we sort them for quality based on several criteria and those that have a high probability of successful implantation and don’t display any serious genetic defects are culled from the rest and preserved until they can be injected into the uterus.

  As you might imagine, one drawback to this procedure is that it produces a lot more fully-realized human beings than can possibly be successfully implanted. There is a certain amount of error built into the process and in order for it to be effective we have to play something of a numbers game. On the plus side, the extra humans that we’ve created can be preserved for quite some time awaiting implantation. They’re very tiny at this stage, so small that you can’t even see them with the naked eye, but all the same they are full-fledged people. Tiny, Lilliputian people! So what we do with them is we preserve them cryogenically. We have these refrigeration units that can hold thirty of the cylinders at once, all preserved in liquid nitrogen until the day when parents can be found for them. Each refrigeration unit stands about three and a half feet tall. They’re pretty heavy, so they need to be moved around (very carefully!) with a sort of modified hand-truck that’s used exclusively for that purpose.

   I was there in the lab when the fire broke out. Like I said, I don’t know how it started, but I knew as soon as I heard the alarm go off that it wasn’t a false alarm, it was the real deal. The evacuation order came over the intercom and I could already smell smoke coming from somewhere. It smelled like burning plastic at first. My heart was in my throat because obviously this is a worst case scenario in a hospital – there are so many patients who can’t evacuate themselves and the staff can only do so much. Instantly I realized the moral quandary I was facing: I could only count on saving as many people as I could get out in one trip. If the fire was spreading quickly --and the billowing black smoke I could see coming from the stairwell doors told me this was so – I would likely not get to return for more. I quickly loaded the refrigeration unit onto its special cart and calculated that the tiny humans inside would only live for about fifteen minutes on the unit’s auxiliary power before it would have to be plugged in again to maintain the proper temperature. I began to roll it down the hall in front of me as quickly as I could.

   As I exited the fertility lab I came out into the hallway that ran through the maternity ward. I didn’t see any other staff around. The shift nurses must have already evacuated. I rolled past the incubators and looked in at the rows of babies behind the glass, sleeping in their little beds. And this is where it really broke my heart. I could see all those infants in there and I realized that nobody would be able to make it here in time to get them all out. I was probably their only hope of surviving. And here I was faced with the most painful moral calculus that I will ever, God willing, be forced to perform. Reasoning carefully that I could at best carry two babies under each arm, it would only be possible for me to save four of them. Whereas the thirty children I was pushing down the hall in their cryogenic slumber would then be left behind to perish.

  “The greatest good for the greatest number,” I told myself through gritted teeth as I fought back tears and resumed my dash down the hallway towards the emergency exit. Now in hindsight the weight of that decision fills me with horror and revulsion, but it’s amazing how in a crisis one can sometimes put such considerations aside and simply do what must be done. With grim determination I continued without looking back. I could hear some of them crying as I hurried on my way.

  Then I passed the room where world-renowned scientist Stephen Hawking was staying – I didn’t even know he was at the hospital! He must have come in for a check-up. Ordinarily I would have been delighted and probably a little star-struck to meet the premier analytical mind of our times, but as I stated I was literally weighted down with matters of life and death. I did momentarily wonder why Mr. Hawking was there by himself – I didn’t see anybody around looking after him, and I also couldn’t help but notice that he wasn’t in his motorized wheelchair. He was lying down on a hospital bed and I could hear him calling out for a nurse in that electronic voice of his but of course nobody would answer. It dawned on me that he was as helpless to leave under his own power as were the tenants of the ward I had just left behind.

  Again, it broke my heart to do it, but what kind of person would I be if I chose to save one person, no matter how brilliant and clebrated he may have been, and in the process let twenty-nine innocents die? I have always believed in the greatest good for the greatest number, and today I know that I do indeed possess the courage of my convictions, although I wish that I had never been forced to find out.

  Fighting back a flood of tears that I knew I could not allow, I rolled the cart on down the hall, through the lobby, past where the Mona Lisa and Picasso’s “Guernica” were hanging in their dispay cases without even turning my head to look. I pushed aside a basket filled with adorable mewling kittens that was blocking the exit and rushed outside, where a crowd of hospital employees were being prevented from re-entering the facility by teams of firefighters. There were twenty-foot tall plumes of flame consuming the walls of the hospital and the air was filled with a dense black smoke and the most ghastly smell you could ever imagine. Firemen were rushing everywhere with high pressure hoses but it was clear even to my untrained eye that the fire was completely beyond their best efforts at control or containment. From back inside I swore I could hear the cries of those left behind as they called out for help that would never come. That odd computerized speak-and-spell monotone calling out “Nurse! Nurse?” --I’ll never forget it, no matter how hard I may try. It haunts me.

  Even so, I did not allow myself to be distracted from the matter at hand. I explained to one of the paramedics about the little ones I had preserved inside the refrigeration unit and we had it hooked up to the power supply in one of the ambulances within a minute’s time. I thought of all those tiny little human lives and as the torrent of tears I had been holding back finally broke, I told myself that I had done the right thing. I had saved thirty little boys and girls, and I know that no matter what horrors I may have been witness to that day, still I would be blessed by the knowledge that in midst of life-threatening peril I had managed to do the right thing.

The greatest good for the greatest number.

  Tonight when you’re saying your prayers, say one for me because God knows I need all the help I can get living with what I’ve seen. But also, say a prayer for yourself that you never find your own convictions tested like I did mine. It is a heavy burden indeed.

Posted by flamingbanjo at July 24, 2006 12:23 PM