PSYCHOTROPIC

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BY ANGELICA LOUISE PFLEIDER
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January 26, 2018
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THE OTHER day during our training for Work Ethics we encountered a very interesting problem called the Heinz Dilemma. It goes like this:

A woman was on her deathbed. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered.

The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging 10 times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug.

The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.”

So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s laboratory to steal the drug for his wife.

Question: Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?

It’s amazing how a question with only two simple options can erupt into a heated debate about morality.

If you base your reasoning on the stages of moral development by American Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg then it’s not your answer that matters but the way you justify it.

That’s a little too technical of a topic though. I want to focus more on how situations can affect our morality. Should I break the law, steal the medicine and save my wife?

Should I be a good citizen and just let her die?

Suppose I do steal it and save her but I end up in prison, what will she think of me? How will she feel about herself knowing that her life was saved due to a crime?

These are the times you realize no matter how much you have been taught by society to “be a good person”, society itself pushes you to contradict your own morality. Consumerism, oppression, tragedies – we can’t all act like the “love your neighbor” good Samaritans we aim to be.

Like in one of my previous articles I said there are times we should make a choice and take a side. The lesser of the two evils, if you want to think of it that way. Consequences are inevitable but at least you made a decision that you are sticking by.

By the way, I personally think Heinz was right in stealing the medicine. Money and ego are fickle things. A human life, however, is something you need to fight to your last breath for.

What do you guys think? (angelica.panaynews@gmail.com/PN)
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