KHUDER_SA
07-09-2002, 02:29 PM
I’ve met someone in an airport sometimes in the past who told me this puzzle
If you have a patient who sleeps in a hospital for a very critical case with which he lives on life support equipment, if the equipment switched off he will die immediately
the cost of operating the equipment is too high, it's several hundreds of dollars per hour and the hope for him to recover and get back to his normal life or at least to live without the help of that equipment is very limited which means, he will continue to live with the support of that costly operated machine for unknown length of time
You can’t afford paying that increasing amount of dollars, in the mean time, you can’t instruct the hospital to turn off the equipment as that means the death of your patient
What will you do in such a case? As for me as Muslim I can’t make a decision of killing the patient by instructing them to switch off the machine if I do so I’ll be accused for a homicide crime in addition to a social criticism of causing a dear to die over keeping my money
But if his life continues to last long in such a situation I’ll run out of money then we both will end up with a bad consequence, as I’ll go to jail for being burdened with debts that I can’t clear out and he will die ,anyway, for having no money to operate the machine for him
the man who was telling me this puzzle has taken his flight to a different destination from mine but he didn’t tell me how to act to get the best result in such a case
I’m sure he doesn’t have a solution for it either and there is no solution at all for it, but in reality there are cases as such where some people find themselves helpless not only to rescue someone who is dying in front of them but for being forced to participate in expediting his death as well when they find the death is the only choice
I’ve heard of stories in Africa where children let their mother dies because of limitation of food “famine” either the mother eats and the kids die or the kids eat and the mother dies of course mothers are the only ones who sacrifice their lives to rescue others “their children”
If you have a patient who sleeps in a hospital for a very critical case with which he lives on life support equipment, if the equipment switched off he will die immediately
the cost of operating the equipment is too high, it's several hundreds of dollars per hour and the hope for him to recover and get back to his normal life or at least to live without the help of that equipment is very limited which means, he will continue to live with the support of that costly operated machine for unknown length of time
You can’t afford paying that increasing amount of dollars, in the mean time, you can’t instruct the hospital to turn off the equipment as that means the death of your patient
What will you do in such a case? As for me as Muslim I can’t make a decision of killing the patient by instructing them to switch off the machine if I do so I’ll be accused for a homicide crime in addition to a social criticism of causing a dear to die over keeping my money
But if his life continues to last long in such a situation I’ll run out of money then we both will end up with a bad consequence, as I’ll go to jail for being burdened with debts that I can’t clear out and he will die ,anyway, for having no money to operate the machine for him
the man who was telling me this puzzle has taken his flight to a different destination from mine but he didn’t tell me how to act to get the best result in such a case
I’m sure he doesn’t have a solution for it either and there is no solution at all for it, but in reality there are cases as such where some people find themselves helpless not only to rescue someone who is dying in front of them but for being forced to participate in expediting his death as well when they find the death is the only choice
I’ve heard of stories in Africa where children let their mother dies because of limitation of food “famine” either the mother eats and the kids die or the kids eat and the mother dies of course mothers are the only ones who sacrifice their lives to rescue others “their children”