ABSTRACT
Sometimes it is morally imperative, or at any rate morally permissible, to keep alive as many people as possible. If rescue workers must choose between groups of thirty and five equally blameless people trapped in mine shafts, or caught in a burning apartment building, or floundering in the sea, most people think they ought to save the larger group straightaway. Or at least most think that the rescuers earn no censure if they aid the larger group simply because that will save more lives. The same is generally true if a runaway trolley will kill five workers unless a bystander shunts it onto a side track, where it will kill but one: the right course—certainly in most cases an irreproachable course—is to divert the train. But the number of lives saved is not always all that matters. Suppose that a surgeon can anesthetize a healthy visitor to her office and remove his vital organs to save five dying patients. Nobody, to my knowledge, would condone trading one life for five. 1
