ABSTRACT
Seven sailors are cast away on a barren island with a plentiful supply of watersalvaged from their ship before it went down-but no food at all. The patrol boat which makes infrequent visits to the island is not due for a good while, and the sailors know that in all probability they will have starved to death by the time it arrives. The ship’s captain, an old-fashioned sort of man entirely innocent of moral philosophy, says that all they can do in these circumstances is resign themselves to their fate; but the ship’s doctor, who is fresh from a course in bioethics, is far from agreeing with him. Fortified by his newly acquired knowledge of the value of life, he proposes to the captain that one of the sailorsthe fattest-should be killed and eaten by the remaining six. The captain is shocked by this proposal, and says that he has no intention of standing by while his crew commit murder and cannibalism, let alone of profiting from such acts.
