Because the real question is if you save more lives using one body for one life, or one body for eight lives.
Unless (pardon me, this just occurred to me) you’re calculating that this one procedure will save all of those lives for a one-shot cost of eight lives.
Even so, all the future lives it saves will come at an opportunity cost of eight other lives not saved, right?
Perhaps I’m missing something, but this seems clear to me.
None of which is to say that the research isn’t worth doing anyway, necessarily.
I probably could have clarified: “N” stands for the number of lives you estimate this procedure could save above and beyond the “default”. In other words, “Net future lives saved with body-transplant technology” minus “Net future lives saved without body-transplant technology”
An example would be, say that there are not any viable hosts for a cadaver’s organs, so normally they would just have to cremate him which is +0 lives. But in this situation, they could transplant a head onto the body, which is +1 lives. And say that scenario plays out 50,000 times over the next however many years. So N=50,000.
Of course N will be much lower for you personally if you find that example (and other similar ones) unrealistic.
Wouldn’t the real equation be N*X > 8N ?
Because the real question is if you save more lives using one body for one life, or one body for eight lives.
Unless (pardon me, this just occurred to me) you’re calculating that this one procedure will save all of those lives for a one-shot cost of eight lives.
Even so, all the future lives it saves will come at an opportunity cost of eight other lives not saved, right?
Perhaps I’m missing something, but this seems clear to me.
None of which is to say that the research isn’t worth doing anyway, necessarily.
I probably could have clarified: “N” stands for the number of lives you estimate this procedure could save above and beyond the “default”. In other words, “Net future lives saved with body-transplant technology” minus “Net future lives saved without body-transplant technology”
An example would be, say that there are not any viable hosts for a cadaver’s organs, so normally they would just have to cremate him which is +0 lives. But in this situation, they could transplant a head onto the body, which is +1 lives. And say that scenario plays out 50,000 times over the next however many years. So N=50,000.
Of course N will be much lower for you personally if you find that example (and other similar ones) unrealistic.