Thomson and the Trolley Problem

✍ Scribed by Michael Gorr

• Book ID: 104743562
• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1990
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 524 KB
• Volume: 59
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0031-8116
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00368393

✦ Synopsis

What, if anything, morally differentiates the following two cases?

The Trolley. A runaway trolley is about to kill five workers on the track. A bystander notices that he can throw a switch, thereby turning the trolley onto a spur where there is only one worker who would be killed. The Transplant. A surgeon has five patients who require organ transplants to live. She can save them only by removing the heart, lungs and kidneys of a healthy but unconsenting patient and distributing them among the five.