Would experimenting on little girls actually help that much?
...
No, seriously. I’ve read the original comment, James A. Donald does not support his claim.
But not any more expensive than caring for chimpanzees. Where, of course, “care for” does not mean “care for”, but means “keep sufficiently alive for experimental purposes”.
This is granted. References to small mice were silly and are now being replaced by “small chimpanzees.” However...
Given the millions killed by malaria and at most thousands of experimental subjects, it takes a heavy thumb on the scales of this argument to make the utilitarian calculation come out against.
This is not the calculation being made. Using your numbers, experimenting on little girls needs to be at least 1.001 times as effective as experimenting on chimpanzees or mice to be worthwhile (because then you save an extra thousand lives for your thousand girls sacrificed.) It’s not a flat “little girls versus millions of malaria deaths.”
This is, quite frankly, not clear to me, and I’d want to call in an actual medical researcher to clarify. Doubly so, with artificial human organs becoming more and more possible (such organs are obviously significantly cheaper than humans.)
This is a get-out-of-utilitarianism-free card. A real utilitarian simply chooses the action of maximum utility. He would only pay a psychological cost for not doing that. When all are utilitarians the laws will also be utilitarian, and an evaluation of utility will be the sole criterion applied by the courts.
Actually, I was interpreting the hypothetical as “utilitarian government in our world.” But fine, least convenient possible world and all that. That’s why I set the non-society costs aside from the rest.
You feel obliged to pretend to be a utilitarian, so you justify your non-utilitarian repugnance by putting it into the utilitarian scales.
This looks like motivated reasoning. The motivation, to not torture little children, is admirable. But it is misapplied.
Honestly, this is probably true—case in point, I would rather not write a similar post from the opposite side. That being said, looking through my arguments, most of them hinge on the implausibility of human experimentation really being all that more effective compared to chimpanzee and artificial organ experimentation.
Morality isn’t like physics
Can you expand on what you see as the differences?
The physics calculations around us have already been done perfectly. If, when we try to emulate them with our theories, we get something abnormal, it means our calculations are wrong and we need to either fix the calculation or the model. When we’ve done it all right, it should all add up to normality.
Our current morality, on the other hand, is a thing created over a few thousand years by society as a whole, that occasionally generates things like slavery. It is not guaranteed to already be perfectly calculated, and if our calculations turn out something abnormal, it could mean that either our calculations or the world is wrong.
This is not the calculation being made. Using your numbers, experimenting on little girls needs to be at least 1.001 times as effective as experimenting on chimpanzees or mice to be worthwhile (because then you save an extra thousand lives for your thousand girls sacrificed.) It’s not a flat “little girls versus millions of malaria deaths.”
Point taken.
This is, quite frankly, not clear to me, and I’d want to call in an actual medical researcher to clarify.
Well, yes. I doubt that JAD has particular expertise in malarial research, I don’t and neither do you. To know whether a malarial research programme would benefit scientifically from a supply of humans to experiment on with no more restraint than we use with chimpanzees, one would have to ask someone with that expertise. But I think the hypothesis prima facie plausible enough to conduct the hypothetical argument, in a way which merely saying “suppose you could save millions of lives by torturing some children” is not.
After all, all medical interventions intended for humans must at some point be tested on humans, or we don’t really know what they do in humans. At present, human testing is generally the last phase undertaken. That’s partly because humans are more expensive than test-tubes or mice. (I’m not sure how they compare with chimpanzees, given the prices that poor people in some parts of the world sell their children for.) But it is also partly because of the ethical problems of involving humans earlier.
That’s partly because humans are more expensive than test-tubes or mice. (I’m not sure how they compare with chimpanzees, given the prices that poor people in some parts of the world sell their children for.)
Note also that getting humans to experiment on by buying them from poor third world parents is generally frowned upon.
This is not the calculation being made. Using your numbers, experimenting on little girls needs to be at least 1.001 times as effective as experimenting on chimpanzees or mice to be worthwhile (because then you save an extra thousand lives for your thousand girls sacrificed.)
Well, given that more then 1 in 1000 drugs that look promising in animals fail human trials, I’d say that is a ridiculously low bar to pass.
No, seriously. I’ve read the original comment, James A. Donald does not support his claim.
This is granted. References to small mice were silly and are now being replaced by “small chimpanzees.” However...
This is not the calculation being made. Using your numbers, experimenting on little girls needs to be at least 1.001 times as effective as experimenting on chimpanzees or mice to be worthwhile (because then you save an extra thousand lives for your thousand girls sacrificed.) It’s not a flat “little girls versus millions of malaria deaths.”
This is, quite frankly, not clear to me, and I’d want to call in an actual medical researcher to clarify. Doubly so, with artificial human organs becoming more and more possible (such organs are obviously significantly cheaper than humans.)
Actually, I was interpreting the hypothetical as “utilitarian government in our world.” But fine, least convenient possible world and all that. That’s why I set the non-society costs aside from the rest.
Honestly, this is probably true—case in point, I would rather not write a similar post from the opposite side. That being said, looking through my arguments, most of them hinge on the implausibility of human experimentation really being all that more effective compared to chimpanzee and artificial organ experimentation.
The physics calculations around us have already been done perfectly. If, when we try to emulate them with our theories, we get something abnormal, it means our calculations are wrong and we need to either fix the calculation or the model. When we’ve done it all right, it should all add up to normality.
Our current morality, on the other hand, is a thing created over a few thousand years by society as a whole, that occasionally generates things like slavery. It is not guaranteed to already be perfectly calculated, and if our calculations turn out something abnormal, it could mean that either our calculations or the world is wrong.
Point taken.
Well, yes. I doubt that JAD has particular expertise in malarial research, I don’t and neither do you. To know whether a malarial research programme would benefit scientifically from a supply of humans to experiment on with no more restraint than we use with chimpanzees, one would have to ask someone with that expertise. But I think the hypothesis prima facie plausible enough to conduct the hypothetical argument, in a way which merely saying “suppose you could save millions of lives by torturing some children” is not.
After all, all medical interventions intended for humans must at some point be tested on humans, or we don’t really know what they do in humans. At present, human testing is generally the last phase undertaken. That’s partly because humans are more expensive than test-tubes or mice. (I’m not sure how they compare with chimpanzees, given the prices that poor people in some parts of the world sell their children for.) But it is also partly because of the ethical problems of involving humans earlier.
Note also that getting humans to experiment on by buying them from poor third world parents is generally frowned upon.
Well, given that more then 1 in 1000 drugs that look promising in animals fail human trials, I’d say that is a ridiculously low bar to pass.
How many drugs that look promising in one human trial fail to pass later human trials?