Suppose you are a mad scientist performing experiments in your basement and you discover a drug that cures cancer. Do you have a moral obligation to share it with the rest of the world? What if you just sit on it and keep it to yourself, is that evil? Can the government intervene and force you to share your cure? What if you decide to sell it, but only at $1 million per dose?
This is one of my favorite hypothetical scenarios because it really brings out some deep philosophical questions about morality, about what makes a person good or evil, and about if and when it’s moral to forcibly override someone else’s free will to make them do the right thing.
Before I go into my answer to this question, I want to discuss how I perceive actions that people can take. An action can be good, bad, or neutral. A doctor saving someone’s life would be a good action, a murderer taking someone’s life would be a bad action, and someone witnessing a crime but doing nothing to help the victim would be a neutral (in)action. Instead of a simple duality between good and bad, I have added in a “neutral” category because there is a huge difference between pulling the trigger yourself and standing by and not stopping somebody else who pulls the trigger.
Many things that fall into the neutral category are inactions, rather than actions, and it can be very tempting to qualify these inactions as bad. For example, suppose I see somebody about to shoot someone else and I happen to have a baseball bat in my hand which I could use to bludgeon the killer before he pulls the trigger… but I don’t. Maybe I’m scared, or a wuss, or afraid I might miss and that he’ll turn his gun on me instead, but for whatever reason I don’t save that poor guy from being shot. A perspective one could take is that the victim would still be alive if only I had leapt into action, so therefore by my inaction I am directly responsible for the victim’s death, and therefore I’m a bad person. I disagree.
Imagine an alternate universe where I never existed. The victim is dead in this universe. The victim is also dead in the real universe. My existence, or lack thereof, is completely irrelevant to the survival of the victim. It’s hard to place blame upon me when my only crime is existing. Placing blame on the person who didn’t act is also a clever way of shifting the blame away from the person who did. Yes, maybe I could have saved the victim’s life, but so could the murderer if he had simply decided not to shoot. I happened to be nearby completely through luck and by no choice of my own, whereas the murderer was there and committing his crime on purpose.
There are also practical considerations when attempting to label inactions as either good or bad. I’m not a doctor. I could have been, but I went into math instead. As far as I know, I haven’t saved any lives. Does that make me a bad person? I clearly could have chosen a more noble profession. Or, what about doctors who choose to study an obscure disease like multiple sclerosis instead of a more common disease like cancer? Surely, these doctors could have chosen a specialty that would have allowed them to save even more lives than they are currently saving.
Here is an even more potent example. Do you have any money saved up for retirement? You could be spending this money on feeding Third World kids. Through your inaction, potentially hundreds of children are dying.
If you do not label inactions as neutral you run into the serious problem of free will. We each make choices about how to live our lives, and we almost always put our own lives ahead of other people’s. I frankly see nothing wrong with that, not because I don’t care about other people, but because I care very much about free will. We each have the right to decide how our lives unfold, so long as we don’t actively prohibit other people from doing the same.
If inaction is considered bad, who decides the right actions to take? The government? They would have to layout rules about which profession people go into, what they spend their retirement money on, who donates organs to whom, etc. In my opinion, this action of forcibly overriding free will leads to a greater injustice than simply leaving people alone to act (or not) as they see fit.
Okay, that was a kind of long-winded explanation of why inaction is morally neutral, but the idea is crucial to the original question about whether or not you must share a cure for cancer if you discover one. I can now answer the question with a NO.
While we are morally obligated to not perform bad actions, we are in no way obligated to perform good ones. If I invented a cure for cancer and then immediately destroyed it, no one would know. Heck, it may have happened already! Yes, not sharing a cure for cancer makes you a dick, but it doesn’t make you evil.
On a side note, it might seem that the sheer numbers we are talking about when it comes to cancer changes things, and that not acting to save one person’s life is totally different from not acting to save millions of people’s lives. Morally, I don’t think there’s a difference. You cannot place a value on a human life. If you could, where would you draw the line? At 100 lives? 1000?
I would like to end this post with a brief note about patent law and intellectual property. This hypothetical situation leads to the greatest argument against such things that I can imagine. If I invent a cure for cancer and then don’t share it, fine, the world is no different. But if I invent a cure for cancer and then don’t share it, and then patent it to make sure that no one else can do good with it, suddenly I have crossed the line. No longer am I simply not performing an action, now I am actively taking an action that is preventing other people from saving lives. Patenting a cancer drug is like committing genocide. If someone has a heart attack and I don’t perform CPR, fine, that’s morally neutral, but if I get in the way of another doctor who’s trying to perform CPR and prevent him from saving the guy’s life, I’ve crossed the line to murder.
I’m not a lawyer, so perhaps a lawyer or law student who reads this blog can share their opinion, but if patents work the way I think they do it seems to me like they are evil incarnate. How can it be morally justified for a corporation to have a monopoly over a drug that can literally mean the difference between life and death? I have no problem with pharmaceutical companies selling their drugs at exorbitant prices. I only have a problem if they step in and prevent some other entrepreneur from finding a better way of manufacturing the drugs that’s cheaper and more effective and saves more lives.
When I phrase this as a question about patent law and intellectual property, I almost invariably get one of the following two answers: (A) Obviously, we will make an exception to patent law in the event that somebody cures cancer, or (B) Your hypothetical situation is silly; of course someone who cures cancer will share that cure with the world. My response is that first of all you can’t just make exceptions to rules whenever they are inconvenient, and second of all I’m sure there are many people in the world crazy enough to cure cancer but not share it, so the situation isn’t quite as hypothetical as it first appears.
Tags: big pharmaceutical, cancer, cures, disease, drugs, ethics, free will, illness, intellectual property, morality, patent law, patents
Inaction is not morally neutral. It could only be so if we existed in a vacuum of sorts, a metaethical no fly zone. However, we do not. Inaction has consequences, which is something that the existentialists speak of, the idea that you are not only obligated as a human to the consequences of what you do, but of what you do not do as well (which is umpteen numbers of actions/inactions). This is, as some of those gloomy guses would say is the pain of life (camus was a bit different but he too was on this train)
Now, do we determine good evil and neutral based on the act itself, or on what happens because of/not because of the act?
That’s an interesting “chicken or egg” type question it seems. The interesting part of that question is that one can come up with situations that apply to any side of the argument.
Also – we have to look at cultural relativism here, or are we assuming western laws and moralities? I’m not a Masai warrior so I can’t really guess as to how they would feel about actions per se…
At first take, I thought your post was going a bit Ayn Rand, who was very big on the concept that your discoveries, intellect and “work” are not things that the world is entitled to, they are things that you own in the purest sense of the word, and can – by choice – sell them as need be, or destroy them if you like. They are yours to do with what you wish, and without moral constraint. Even if you were to patent your invention, it is YOURS you are free to do with it what you wish. The world is again, not entitled to anything you create.
Her characters show this time and again with various actions (the one that comes to mind immediately is Dominique Francon in the Fountainhead buying amazing art and then destroying it so no one else could taint it with their perceptions)
I also think that perhaps you are mixing law with morality and though they are often parallel to each other, they are most definately not one in the same, nor are they interchangeable.
You ask the question of “who decides what is right/wrong” — that’s a tough one. That is the entire crux of the philosophy of Metaethics. thats where you get all sorts of theories about universal ways to determine “right/wrong” – utilitarianism and theories of Value? Egoism? Prima Facie variable-weight theory, Kant’s Catagorical Imperative, contractarianism (Hobbes, locke, Rawls) and on and on… contractarianism is sorta what the US constitution is, lots of words in that document lean to that…
So lots of things to think about here I guess. It is, as you state – a great question. Its actually a question that they use a lot in medical ethics classes and I’ve heard similar questions asked in metaethics courses. Its one that may not have an answer, with everything drilling down to “well, i just feel that way about it”
The other question here is do you believe in inherent morality within humans? C.S. Lewis covers this very well with lots of his works – Mere Christianity going deep into the idea of being born with morality “built in” (like drivers side air bags!)
LOTS of fun questions – I hope you reply to this, i’m curious as to where this can go.
First time poster – I saw your piece on the monty hall problem and I liked how you explained it. Interesting blog indeed!
After all that stuff I posted – i probably shouldn’t sit on the fence and give a opinion.
I believe that if you discovered a cure for cancer and you destroyed it knowing that cancer KILLS people, and that your cure could cure at least 1 of the people that has cancer, i.e. they live rather than die – then the destruction of the cure would be a act of badness. Inaction would ALSO be an act of badness as again, you are willfully witholding something that could change “death” to “life” (I hesitate to say evil as evil has religious overtones…) I’m assuming here that this is, an act of indirect manslaughter, and i’m assuming that manslaughter is “bad”. If you turn the power off to a hospital knowing that this could possibly end the life support system of someone(lets suppose there is no back up generator for this scenario) and they die – are you guilty of manslaughter? I believe so.
It seems like it comes down to “weight” – i.e. how much of your actions contributed vs. other happenings in the scenario.
The fundamental problem with this argument, and all other arguments against intellectual property, is that they assume the creation process is free or automatic.
Suppose it would cost 900 million dollars to invent a cure for cancer. Would any individual do it? No, they simply couldn’t afford it. You might try lobbying the government to do it, but suppose that for some reason the government is incapable of doing the job right.
In this case, the only way to create the cure for cancer is to promise the creator that there will be some way to repay the creation costs. And then the creator would need to raise the money from investors with the promise of future returns. And that means intellectual property laws and a big drug company with monopoly pricing of the drug. You’d have to charge 90,000 cancer patients $10,000 each just to repay the development costs, even if the drug was free to manufacture.
If you take away the patent rights and gave the drug to all cancer patients, then you have stolen $900 million from people who invested their money in the cure. This which would mean that nobody would ever again support that kind of research, except out of charity. That would mean a lot less research.
By weakening patent laws for some short-term gain, you would be stealing from the future to benefit the present, which is a moral wrong just like pollution.
there are plenty of instances where great things were discovered accidentally without intended research about said “thing”. This exception makes it very difficult to go the route of “well discovery costs” as there are many things that in fact, did NOT cost – and were essentially oportunistic mistakes.
Now, as highly unlikely as this could be – its possible that cancer could be cured by mixing some things together in the amazon to make a tasty soup – and BLAM! no more mutating cells.
i guess my other concern here is the idea that the weight of “money” somehow somewhere equals the weight of “life”. to argue about costs in compairison to “life” – there really ISN’T a compairison.
I think it has to be remembered that we are in in this scenario a purely hypothetical world. Or are we – I assumed that a question like this is in fact, a hypothetical world for the purpose of the question…
Hi, Capolan, and welcome to the blog! You should always feel free to state your opinions here, that’s the whole point. However, you mentioned that you are afraid this will boil down to, “Well, I just feel that way about it,” and you fell into your own trap. You say that you feel inaction is not neutral, but you give no reasons for your belief. I’d be interested to hear WHY you feel this way. The only example you gave was cutting off electricity to a hospital, which is obviously an action, not an inaction, so it’s clearly morally wrong and has no relevance to the discussion.
As I mentioned in my post, the idea that inaction is bad has serious consequences. Do you have both of your kidneys? If so, you are a murderer, because there is someone out there who needed a kidney transplant and died.
I also cannot believe in any moral system that places not even trying to find a cure for cancer above trying and succeeding but then not sharing it. If people are held responsible for their inactions, then clearly the best thing to do is to never do anything, otherwise you will be in a prison of your own success.
Alleged Wisdom, you are skirting dangerous ground by equating morality with money. In your opinion, are rich people worth more than poor people? Bill Gates could single-handedly pay $900 million to find a cure for cancer, so should he get medical treatment before I do because he’s the more valuable human being?
$900 million is also completely arbitrary. Penicillin was famously discovered by accident at no cost. Are you saying we should allow people to patent expensive drugs, but not cheap ones? If so, at what dollar value do we draw the line?
Suppose you invent a cure for cancer and then patent it. Also suppose that I have a seven-year-old daughter who is dying of cancer, but I can’t afford the $10,000 per dose that you are charging. Further suppose that I managed to reverse engineer your cure using household chemicals in my garage (humor me, here) and that I save my daughter’s life. Should I be thrown in jail? I broke the law, after all.
And you know what, going to jail for a few years would be a very small price to pay to save my daughter’s life, and I would gladly do it. But any law that is so disconnected from reality and that would punish me for saving my own daughter’s life simply cannot be a just law.
I agree with this to a point. Ultimately, I don’t think we can consider seeking a cure for cancer, finding it, and not sharing it inherently more immoral than not seeking it at all. The fact that a person refrains from performing a good action, even if it’s a very cheap action for them to perform in comparison to the gain, does not transform it into a bad action.
However, I don’t think this is the whole story. Rather than look at what an action does, we look at what it tells us about a person. I think that I would feel that such a person, depending on their investment was worse than the one who does nothing. I believe this is because I place a higher bar than “neutral impact” in my expectations of people. I think they should contribute back a bit more than they get out (proportional to their capacity to do so), and anyone falling below this line is substandard – not just neutral, but worse than I think a human should be.
Thus I can’t extract moral information about the person who doesn’t seek the cure – I learn nothing and assume he’s at the background level of morality. However someone who acquires a cancer cure and does nothing with it does give information about their moral stance – that their “contribute back ratio” is below ::, far below what I think a moral individual’s should be.
If, rather than discarding it, they profit from it, I follow the same scheme – they’ve got something of value, and I don’t begrudge them profiting, but think that the benefit should fall into a compromise ratio of selfishness to selflessness (here profit:lives saved). Gaining $1,000,000,000 at the cost of a life left unsaved I can understand, they’re not that obligated to be so completely unselfish that they’d pass that up. Letting thousands die for a profit of $1 falls well below the ratio I expect a moral entity to positively contribute.
Howdy Philip – thanks for saying hi and welcoming me.
-ok now down to it.
Philip – you said this:
“However, you mentioned that you are afraid this will boil down to, “Well, I just feel that way about it,” and you fell into your own trap. You say that you feel inaction is not neutral, but you give no reasons for your belief. I’d be interested to hear WHY you feel this way.”
That is a fair point. innaction is not neutral, it is an act – in fact possibly the easiest one to commit. not acting is not the same as neutrality. Saying inanction is neutral is similar to saying “failure is not an option” OF COURSE ITS AN OPTION! ( I always hated this phrase – sorry for the caps) in fact, its the easiest option to achieve in most cases. neutrality and inaction are not one in the same. one can “not act” and it is an evil action, one can not act and it is a “good” action, or one can not act and see where the situation leads next, which may be the closest thing to neutral one can get. I would go so far as to say that there is no such thing as a neutral action/inaction – it can’t be done, any example you can provide Can be delved into and determined to fall in a certain moralistic camp (though closer to the middle than the poles on the continueum). Inaction can belong to any of the ranges of morality. I can easily think of hypotheticals that would prove this, but I wanted to avoid getting bogged down in the details. In my “hospital” arguement – it parallels anyone DESTROYING or not allowing anyone else to make a cure for cancer. Perhaps I should have been clearer regarding that – as it most certainly is a parallel and has relevance. now we can parallel that to inaction by simply allowing for a choice to be presented in our hypothetical world. What if someone else turned the power off to the hospital, and you could turn the power BACK ON to that same hospital – the lever is 10 ft away from you. Your “inaction” here would be immoral. sure you didn’t turn it off, but your inaction would weigh in greatly in the death of these people. We as humans are responsible for the things we don’t do. Its a horrible fact.
Now – your example of me having my kidneys — your causation is going much too far here, and it is an extreme example. This is where that metaethical “weight” comes into play. sure I have my kidneys. I’ll also accept that I could go right out and donate one of those babies right now, and that since I don’t – my innaction could be construed as immoral. HOWEVER – here’s that weight thing. there is no all/nothing premise here. there is most definately a scale. my innaction of NOT giving away my kidneys simply because I can (which by the way isn’t neutral at all – its self preservation, its selfishness which could be considered “bad” – this flows into the old arguement that there is no such thing as alturism because even a selfless act makes someone feel good – and thus it was selfish), vs. my innaction of not flipping a lever that will HUGELY affect/effect the death/life of hospital patients are not of the same weight. No reasonable person (i’m not saying you are unreasonable – i’m saying that to determine a baseline. there is a baseline of general reasonability that can be maintained) would say they were. That weight comes from how direct vs. indirect that inaction is.
Now – on a tiny scale could I be called a murderer for not giving away my kidney – eh, maybe (though the term “murder” is a very loaded term…its kind of like calling me a murderer for eating meat…causation taken too far.) most reasonable people however would decide that this is taking causation too far. It would be like a fundamentalist saying that God caused WWII. Even most Christians would be like…”uh….kinda?”
Another interesting factor that seems to always weigh into peoples decisions of morality is their knowledge of the situation itself. For example. If I was directly aware of someone in my life that needed a kidney and I sat here and didn’t give it to them suddenly that causation chain gets a little shorter, and now my decision has more moral “weight” now, what if that person was my dad? – even more weight. and what if I was aware that it was my dad and I was told that ONLY MY KIDNEY would save him – even more weight still.
Knowing that you could save people directly with relatively little action on your part – and not doing it – is immoral. we may not like it, but it is. and the act of not doing it, with that knowledge is not a neutral act. innaction in this situation with the knowledge of what that inaction will do, makes inaction part of morality.
You then wrote:
I also cannot believe in any moral system that places not even trying to find a cure for cancer above trying and succeeding but then not sharing it. If people are held responsible for their inactions, then clearly the best thing to do is to never do anything, otherwise you will be in a prison of your own success.
I don’t think things were shown to be “equal” here, and to me it seems obvious that “not trying” is not the same moral weight of “succeeding but not sharing” – there is responsibility for everything you do/don’t do but they most definately don’t have equal weight. And your “best thing to do is never do anything” is in fact one of the arguements of the existential world, some in fact would call this the crux of existential crisis. the “double whammy” of life – punished for stuff you do, punished for stuff you don’t do. but again, there is a question of proximity and weight here.
We are in fact, in life responsible for the things we don’t do. Where I diverge with the existential path here is that I shouldn’t be responsible for the things I didn’t know about. I.E. I just now did not go to my window and shout the word IGLOO! to my neighbor. now – what if my doing that, somehow would have kept a van from hitting her and killing her outright? am I responsible for that? I personally don’t think so. I had no idea that my shouting “igloo!” would save anything ever. And no reasonable person would say “you are in some way responsible for that woman’s death!” Now, interestingly enough that perception may change if they find out AFTER THE FACT that my yelling IGLOO! would have saved her. There would be “UNREASONABLE” people (probably from the internet) that would assign me blame for something I didn’t know.
The moral system that we live under is interestingly enough never concrete. There is no known universal moral system that can be applied successfully every time to every situation. and our moral codes that we hold are a hodge podge of multiple theories and personal beliefs. There are some that come “close” – most people using moral “weight” (technically called the Prima Facie theory). The most accepted Normative Ethical Theories out there are blended together to make what we have now.
Utilitarianism (Direct and indirect), Prima Facie (categorical and actual), Kant’s Categorical Imperative, and contractarianism, all make up the mess we have as a way to structure our everyday moral choices.
If you discover a cure for cancer, do you have a moral obligation to share it with the world?
My answer to this question is yes, why not? But surly i will put a price on it so that i can enjoy the profit for my Hard work, time, and money i have spent on it. My work is to serve people within my potential which has gifted by god to earn my livelihood.
What is the point of knowing something important and not using it for the benefit of the people. If i discover something important and don’t share it with people then i am a selfish person who don’t care his surrounding and also his happiness. To be happy we need to make other happy, we need to work as human who worth living with other human. If i see somebody is killing any one in front of me and i am not doing anything to save his life, i also cant accept any help from anyone if i happened to be in same situation. Its not only the duty of any institution or government Body to save and protect the society. Its in our own interest to make sure that people with wrong purpose and interest should not get the strength that i have killed one person in front of many people and still get way with it. He will get motivated and will do the same work with any of your relatives or friend. That time also you can tell yourself that it is my moral right to stay away and save myself. Its any act of Coward who don’t value people’s life and still boosting I am right after all i have not kill him.If i think that i am an old person or an women who cant fight, its ok. But if i am young and still not make an attempt to save the person who is getting raped in front of me.Than where is the point of Being Human. It will make me fell guilty, that i got an opportunity to do a great contribution and still i lose it in the name of moral. Morality means to do what is right at that time of situation. If a person is relay good, he will definitely won’t think about the consequence of his act in the time of saving someone. He will do it automatically without further consideration. And above all believe it that if you do something good for someone, your effort never get wasted.
So my last point is that if you discover cure for cancer. Get it patient so that other cant simply copy and past your finding and get the profit. Cancer is a dangerous disease and there are many wealthy and rich people and government institution are there who have well ready money to pay for there benefits.
Please forgive me if i heart anyone’s feelings and belief.
Couldn’t someone who is very wealthy such as Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey just pay for the cure for cancer?
Man is a social animal. If we accept that, then as we age and develop, we become part of increasingly larger and more abstractly defined social groups, ie. mother and father, larger immediate family, family clan, friends, school, neighborhood, city, nation, work, religion and profession. I think we can list many more. Do we have an obligation to help our group prosper and survive?
Let’s apply Phil’s reasoning to a more basic level. You are part of a hunter-gatherer tribe. The tribe is running into hard times and many children and elders are dying because of the lack of food. You discover a way/or invent a tool that would provide food for all of them and help your tribe survive the coming hard season. However, you think that this invention/discovery may change the traditional way of life for your tribe so you decide not to share the knowledge and expertise that you have and over the next few years all the members of the tribe die off.
In this instance, can you label withholding of knowledge and expertise that would promote the well-being of the tribe as neutral?
There’s a difference between being a jerk and being evil. Withholding better farming methods makes you a jerk, but it’s still a neutral action. Using the same analogy about imagining different universes that I used above for cancer, in a world where you don’t exist your tribe will die out because they won’t have access to these new farming methods, and in a world where you do exist but don’t share them your tribe will still die out. Therefore, your existence or nonexistence has absolutely no bearing on the outcome. I find it logically impossible to label a person as good or evil if the existence of that person is totally irrelevant. Therefore, it must be neutral.
So let me try to understand what you’re saying. If you do exist and your tribe knows you exist, and you have knowledge or expertise that you choose not to share, and your tribe knows that you have that knowledge or expertise and it knows that you chose not to share it to help the tribe prosper and survive, the tribe (they after all will be the moral arbiters of your action as there are no others or ONE who will define and characterize your actions)then they will look at your decision as a “neutral” act because the outcome will turn out to be the same as if you didn’t exist in the first place? The results for the tribe are the same whether one deliberately withholds the knowledge or whether one never existed.
Your labels of “good” and “evil” perhaps shouldn’t be taken into consideration in the instance of your example, of not coming to the aid of someone who is in danger. I think if we consider that there are levels of competence required to do something that would help. If you were a police officer and didn’t do something about the impending crime where would that inaction fall in the continuum of good and evil. (These labels really don’t fit.) Or, as an untrained citizen you photographed the crime with your cell phone and dialed 911 to alert the police, but didn’t physically try to intercede. In both instances, the result is the same for the victim as if you didn’t exist. How will the tribe judge each of the neutral actions? (I’m assuming that judgments of good and evil can only be made by members of the tribe.)
Am I making sense, or am I approaching this question from the wrong perspective?
First, whether or not people are aware that you are a jerk doesn’t change the action, but it may change the response. If I cure cancer and don’t tell anybody, well, no one will ever be the wiser. If I hold a press conference, however, and taunt people with the fact that I cured cancer but won’t share it, it would be reasonable to assume that I might be lynched. Still, in that instance, curing cancer and not sharing it is a neutral action, and lynching is a bad action.
Second, whether something is legal is not the same as whether it’s moral. In your example, the tribe might decide to kill anybody who withholds information, and that is their law, but that in no way affects the morality of the situation.
Third, I agree with you about police officers. It’s immoral for a police officer to stand by and do nothing while a crime is in progress, but that’s only because it’s his duty to intervene! He has taken an oath to protect and to serve. Not only that, but there is a social contract between the taxpayers and the police force: we pay their salary, and in return they agree to put their lives on the line to protect us. Normal citizens are under no such obligation, so their inaction would be neutral. It’s okay to put police officers under this obligation because they CHOOSE to be police officers. If they don’t like it, they can just resign.
The bottom line of my argument is this: it’s wrong to FORCE somebody to be nice. It would be nice if everyone was nice, but forcing someone to be nice is a bad act in and of itself.
I’m starting to agree with some of what you say. But, I need to think about what/when actions or inactions are morally “neutral.” I think another question that should be considered is the concept of “good” and “evil.” Definitions of these terms have often been repressive and only result in limiting human experience.
Thanks for this thought provoking discussion.
If you discover the cure for cancer, you have as much moral obligation to share it with the world as a Doctor curing others for free, and as much moral obligation as youprogramming software for hospitals and then sharing it.
I’d sell it for twice as much as it’d cost me in money to ‘discover’ the cure so that I don’t have to keep working. I bet you it’d be like 10 cents a taxpayer. Which is pretty good considering people with cancer can now live 20 more years. Everyone has relatives who have had cancer, right?
I didn’t read through all the comments to see if anyone else brought this up, but what if you did discover a cure, and you told the appropriate branches of the medical community, and let’s say a government entity bought it off you at an enormous fee but made you sign papers saying that you could not claim any rights to the formula or it’s discovery, you do so, since it seems like a very generous compensation, and then…
You never hear about it again.
Curing cancer would mean the eliminating of so much maintenance and treatment money, how could any good economist endorse releasing it to the general public?
It would be given only in contractual secret to the richest of the rich and privileged.
i believe nicole hit the nail on the head, tho i am not sure if that argues inaction being good/bad vs inaction being neutral.
good blog. will bookmark.
Actually, I think you’re to close to the issue….back up a bit and look at it in totality.
1. Any “mad scientist” , “WhackO University”, “Super Stealth Clinic” that comes up with almost anything Cancer cure related at this point in time…….Owes a portion of that discovery to the American Taxpayer whether they like it or not. Any “mad” or otherwise clown out there that discovers something now and claims it was done on their and their investors dime “only” is full of crap. Whoever discovers anything owes a substantial amount of “getting there” to all of us that have paid into the system for so many years.
2. Don’t think they don’t know this. Their scientists didn’t come from Mars…..they came from US Schools where they were educated based on the work of others funded by all of us!
3. First we always hear that great strides have taken place in this cancer field or that cancer field. …. Then…..that’s the last we hear from that company!…..Ever wonder why..? Well, it’s not because a lab tech lost the napkin that had the secret formula….. It’s called Lawyers and investors…
4. I love the people that say…. “Well” they have to patent it….right?” We’ll just learn from the patent…. You’d be surprised as to how many known discoveries are intentionally “not” patented, due to the old adage…..who else would have the know-how anyway..???
5. Basically…..most cancers have a cure…..you just can’t afford it.
No government financially contributed to Edison’s light bulb, so he wins…
No government financially contributed to Wright’s plane so they win…
No government financially contributed to Bell’s phone so he wins..
No government financially contributed to Westinghouse’s transformers so he wins….
Every American has contributed to the “Cure Cancer in our lifetime” cause established years ago and funded through zillions in grants…..so….We own a big part of it whether the “mad scientists” like it or not!
Well, I think answer to this question is not as complex as it looks, if you are a person who have never used any shared knowledge, meaning you have reinvented wheel, computers, electric bulb and of course number system, then you have every right to keep your “cancer cure” to your self only. But if thats not the case, then its your moral obligation to return it to the world. Same rule applies to the price of the cure. After all, what goes around is what comes around.
My goal in life is to find a cure for cancer..If I do find a cure I will give it away for free…
I fail to understand the notion of right, wrong, or morality in the context of a evolutionary viewpoint. What makes the reduction of suffering, or quality of life, or the desire to see “good occur” in others relevant?
It may be worth noting that wanting “good” for yourself is obvious — e.g. it physically feels good to the wanter (to be well fed, sheltered, not sick, etc…)
Thoughtful and meaningful comments appreciated…
First, I think all actions and inactions are morally neutral. Honestly, who’s to say that killing someone is wrong? I’m not saying go and do it, just look at the facts. No matter what happens in our lives we’re all going to die anyway, and if someone is killed, yeah sure people will grieve about it but eventually they’ll die too. Soon, no one will give a damn who that person was and it really doesn’t matter. You probably think I’m crazy, but I’m not. I’m just a person to view things scientifically. It doesn’t matter who dies or if I kill someone because nothing will matter in the end anyway. We only make an impact in our society, the human society but you have to look at the bigger picture. What else gives a damn about humans? Nothing, unless of course we’re killing it. All life is just as valuable and if killing a human is wrong then squashing a mosquito is wrong too, but no one stops to consider the ethical implications behind that.
That probably made no sense so I’ll explain my view in another way that makes no sense, and eradicates both free will and time.
Time is really just a figment of the human imagination. A way to schedule appointments and meetings and get things done more efficiently. That’s fine, but think about what time really is. Essentially, there’s past, present, and future. Past was once the present, and future will be the present. Well, the present actually doesn’t exist at all. If you think about it, everything that’s happening right now at this very instant has just happened. It isn’t happening, but it’s happened. That means that the present is the past, and that means that the future is the past too because every next moment is also gone by also. That means that we’re living lives that have already been lived. We exist, yes, but we’re living the past, looking forward to the past, and looking backward to the past. It’s all just one big timeline that’s already happened. That means that we have no control over our actions because we’ve already taken them. And if we have no control of our actions, how can morality be taken into account? It can’t, there is no morality because there is no free will. Everything’s already set in stone because we’re living the past.
As I said, that made no sense so I’ll respond to questions and comments.
This scenario is not hypothetical. It happens every day in fits and bursts of every pharma research lab around the country on various forms. The system withholds improvements in order to maximize profits (antibiotics, cancer drugs). It chooses to lay out a marketing plan based on patent protections, dragging out the introduction of new improved therapies if there is blue sky left in existing patents. On the other hand, they also make very little improvements to an existing drug, call it new, and coerce people to use the new patented drug over the old, equally effective drug, costing patients and insurers massive funds that could be used to save lives, improve quality of life, etc. They also withhold evidence that might show a drug to be woefully ineffective until forced to disclose information. The only liability for these offenses might be a small fine- nobody goes to jail even though they have a direct involvement with harms or deaths.
My question is, how long would the scientist last knowing he is selling a dose at that much when more cancer patients die each day!
(in your scenario)
and as far as a government or anyone else trying to take/copy the formula by force, I would have to agree ON this situation. But that’s because it’s a cure, it’s not a bad thing, and don’t try to compare it to someone forcibly taking something that is consider “bad or neutral”
don’t try to patent or sell it, yes you made it, but who are we as humans if we can’t share something like this that is seen as a glorious find..
First off, let me just say that I would share it, within the current aspects of the law. I also, see no reason why one cannot profit from ones actions – if they are within the law of the people.
I’ll try and answer each question separately.
“Suppose you are a mad scientist performing experiments in your basement and you discover a drug that cures cancer. Do you have a moral obligation to share it with the rest of the world?”
Some of what I say may take some time to digest and initially might sound a bit off … please take the first few comments as food for thought while you read to the end.
Is this cancer you refer to, one that kills instantly? Or a process that takes some time? Perhaps, you can offer an alternative, morally acceptable, way to die. Perhaps by accident? Is there a moral or normal way to die? Maybe from a meteor falling out of the sky or lightening? The premise that you have not defined but alluded to, is to cause life to go on forever. So anything that causes life, as we know it, to end would require moral intervention? This is perhaps what drove that scientist mad.
I agree that, given the states of a negative and a positive, that there must be a state in between that can be called neutral. Perhaps the zero state. So what things fall into the positive state and what things fall into the negative state? … Holmes would say, the answer, no matter how incredible, would be that which would not fall into the other two states.
How can an inaction be negative? or positive? To extrapolate the morality beyond the given question would be an error … you can only get an answer to the question regarding the mad scientist.
So based on the fact, that a cure of cancer is not a cure of death, to which you allude, then it is neither moral or immoral. Therefore, not sharing must be neutral.
“What if you just sit on it and keep it to yourself, is that evil?”
NO. Evil is an intention … to do one way or the other. Inaction is neither … neutral.
“Can the government intervene and force you to share your cure?”
Government, defined as ‘the people’, can do whatever they want if by consensus. Any singular person can also act on his or her behalf and also try to ‘force’ you. You are solely charged with defending your stance against their opinion. If you take acts to destroy the evidence of the cure, an action, then I would consider that immoral. How will someone know you have a ‘cure’? You would have to tell them for them to know. So you acted in some way to transfer the knowledge of the ‘cure’. You can only not act to remain neutral. Any action would take you into moral or immoral.
“What if you decide to sell it, but only at $1 million per dose?”
not acting to save one person’s life is totally different from not acting to save millions of people’s lives. Morally, I don’t think there’s a difference.”
Action taken … the offer. This would be the hardest with which to come to terms. I could see making an argument not to sell it to a convicted murderer … especially one who killed a family member of mine … except at a price I knew they couldn’t afford. I am working for a way to not think this way, as I see this as a flaw in my personality. Perhaps one day I will be enlightened. I’m gonna call this one immoral with exceptions. We restrict felons from certain privileges like freedom. What if the transfer of knowledge helped someone else to perpetuate their ongoing immorality?
Anyways … that is my theory … that is what I think.
I have read a few of your articles and seen a video or two … and I noticed one theme ongoing … that you make assumptions and then allude to certain ‘facts’ based on these assumptions … if your assumptions are wrong … then your facts are not facts … nor is it reasonable to assume they are. That is called a theory.
Perhaps I can offer this mindbender … Given that a supernatural being, or beings, exist(s) … prove, using the scientific method, that they do … exist.
Or if you do not like the religious overtones … maybe like this … Given, that something is not able to be proven, prove that it is not able to be proven. Shoot yourself in the foot each time you say ‘I think’ or ‘suppose’ or ‘make an assumption’.
Agnostic will take on a new meaning for you. How about doing an article on this … Given that I cannot prove, nor disprove, there is a supernatural being, which is logically the better … there is or there is not?