1. Moral Dilemmas
Moral dilemmas are thought experiments which ask you to imagine a difficult situation and
decide what you think the morally correct course of action would be. There are no truly
‘right’ answers to these questions, as they often ask you to compare two different moral
imperatives and choose which one you feel is most important.
For example, if we accept that it is morally correct to never torture a living creature, and
that it is morally correct to save a human’s life if you have the ability to do so, how do you
decide what to do if you can only save a human’s life by torturing someone else?
Read through this moral dilemma, and have a think about what you might do this
situation.
1.- The Deliberate Infection
Ken was a doctor. One of his patients, whom he had diagnosed as HIV positive, was about
to receive a blood transfusion prior to being released from the hospital. He had told Ken, in
the confidence of their doctor-patient relationship, that after he got his transfusion, and his
medicine from Ken, he intended to infect as many people as possible with HIV starting that
evening. It occurred to Ken that he could contaminate his medication by putting an
untraceable poison in it that would kill him before he got a chance to infect others.
Should Ken have poisoned this man in order to prevent him from spreading HIV?
