Ethical dilemma: Whose life is more valuable? - Rebecca L. Walker 

It's well and good to say that it is unethical to sacrifice one life to save five, but what do you think happens in an emergency room when doctors and nurses perform triage? What about when we choose to fund research to cure one fatal disease vs another? Or whether we want to invest in infrastructure to protect against fire in California or flooding in Florida? Try as we might, the trolley problem is inescapable (and sadly, refusing to choose is also a choice).

“Whatever you decide, your choice should be well justified.” This is a great rule to live by.

Ik it's a never ending dilemma but regardless of the fact if it's right or wrong, I think it's just that any certain species will try to protect other members of its own species.

Humans will always think of humans as the main priority. Well, because we're humans. Our friends and family are humans. So I think in this case, the cause is more of an emotional one. When a lot of people would face a choice to save either their friend or a stranger, they'd certainly prefer the friend. So even in humans, lives are not equally important to everyone.

From what i can tell, assigning value isnt the problem at all. Anyone can dictate how valuable something is for themselves. The actual problem is forcing other people to accept a dictated value. The end goal is to have everyone agree that "yes, this is the value of something" which isn't going to happen for as long as people think for themselves.

The philosophical content are always intriguing. thanks for the videos.

The animators must be praised as always.. how cool they make these animations shine

About 5 years ago when I was 17 ted was a place for answers for me, but now as I grow older and get into them deeper, the videos are full of dilemmas and questions

Well, to be honest there can be no conclusion to this argument because it is essentially our nature to keep ourselves safe. We are naturally biased in our opinions. We cannot turn away from the fact that in end we still want better medications and treatments for ourselves and for those close to us even at the cost of an animal 's suffering. To be precise, moral ethics are only acceptable to a person if it doesn't go against his/her essential needs.

The animation of these Ted Ed Videos always fascinates me. Thank you.

"I am too early I don't know what to comment..So just pretend like I said something meaningful "

Morality is hard. It's hard to care about others when they are suffering and you can't help them. They only matter if they matter to you, but either way, they still suffer. The belief that someone is going to come along and "solve" this moral issue for us by telling us who is and isn't worth consideration is naive and harmful. Just as much as sexism, racism, and homophobia aren't "solved," this issue will never be solved either. Waiting for some catch all solution only worsens the problem as we ignore it.

timely, been pondering this for months. Unavoidable for now, like a carnivore eats another animal, but we should constantly innovate to slowly go away from animal abuse. I think there is a future for medical technologies that needs little animal testing and animal farming.

The dilemma gets even crazier if we consider plants. I personally think that it would be impossible to consider every single species as an equal. Even you reading this right now, even, is killing thousands of microorganisms that are keeping you alive.

If you are the one whose life is at line you'll be ready to sacrifice all of them

Another good question is why the assertion that life can be valued like a commodity for its use to an economy - we've called non useful life pests.

Scoiety is inevitably built on the suffering of someone. Best we can do is try to lessen the suffering, we can never truly erase it.

There is no objective reason to consider other species' lives as equal or more valuable than ours. The morality is based in empathy; we care more if a dog dies than an insect. The problem is that empathy is relative since it varies so much between cultures and individuals. Since morality is not objective then I think its acceptable to construct the hierarchy of beings--the pyramid one.

It always bothered me when people get offend when described as animals in a scientific way.

My reasoning is there’s no « right » answer about it. In a vacuum, life is life, whatever its form may be but for each living being faced with this dilemma, it wouldn’t be far fetched to believe one would place more value on its species over the others. For cases without alternatives, if an action is bound to hurt another species but is necessary, it is, for me, understandable to prioritize our own. Finding ourselves into a predicament like the « 100 monkeys for one life » might happen and surely there would be will to blame those who would perpetrate it, but at the same time, without any other choice, wouldn’t we blame as well if they let the person die? Once again, I’m talking about necessity and actions from humans towards non humans. Life, for the most part, uses life to sustain itself. It’s not right, it’s not wrong, it’s the way it is.

You can determine the value of life when you understand what it's like to die when you don't want to.

We are animals. We are a species's that doesn't want to go extinct. I believe in protecting the environment because if we don't our species will go extinct. Unfortunately if we do not test life saving medication's on animals that could also lead to our extinction. Survival is cruel. There are no easy answers.

I think we should respect those who are sentient, and we can guess if a thing is sentient based on whether it has a nervous system. But it's hard to say. In any case, animals (except sponges I guess) should definitely be considered moral subjects if you ask me.

This is very thoughtprovoking ❤

If this video showed actual pictures and clips of *what actually happens inside labs*, people here would be discussing differently and more interestingly.

How is animal testing any different from animal farming? If it's not unethical to farm animals for human consumption how can we argue that animal testing is unethical, its the same conversation...

I’m not sure there’s a right answer to this question. But in my opinion I feel like if we have to use other species as resources and tools, can we not just also acknowledge that they are living breathing things? treat them with respect and kindness? Can we not be more mindful of what we are doing and what we’re taking, instead of fishing the whole ocean?

I hate animal testing because it’s unethical but I also acknowledge how important testing is. Most animal testing is inaccurate because different species react differently to the chemicals, medications, etc.

I dont think this question should be about life, but suffering. After all, even a single cell is alive. If the animal has the capacity to suffer (not just feel pain - nociception) it's needs and feelings should be taken into consideration. But still sacrificing a few is worth it if you can save billions, no matter the species (in my opinion). Ofc I hope we can test everything with lab grown cells in the future, the science is going at that direction as we speak. As a biochemist I really need to have an opinion in this since I will possibly be working with animals and cells in the future. I have to make an education decision on what am I okey working with.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Thanks Ted ed

I believe that humans tend to perceive each other as more valuable because we are part of a society. As members of this society, we all play important roles in making it work smoothly. Therefore, it's natural for us to prioritize preserving human lives to maintain the strength and stability of our society. From my perspective, objectively, animals' lives are not less valuable than human lives. However, their impact on our society is generally less pronounced. This could be one of the reasons why we tend to place a higher value on our own species and those in closer proximity to us, such as people in our country, community, or family. Since they are more closely connected to us, their presence, lives, or absence can have a more direct impact on our daily lives, leading us to perceive their value as higher.

As long as there is no suitable alternative for testing the argument is just mindgames

Lovin this video. it just imposed questioning as we should be questioning norms

Wild that this video completely sidesteps the conversation of people eating and displacing animals, which is many orders of magnitude more impactful.

For a species that considers itself to be the “most moral being” They do the most immoral actions at times

We need more of those videos, the ones that make ppl think about their moral compass and stances.

What I believe is a living being will go to a great extent to save its life ,saving our lives as a human by exposing other species with lethal viruses is not moral but , accepted .Its a never ending dilemma and the species which will always rule ie, powerful will always be considered on the top of value pyramid.

Every life is precious, wherever it’s a person, a cockroach, a bird, or even bacterium, every living thing has a will to survive, grow, and repopulate. Taking their life away is always heart breaking for me but we humans have to understand death is also just as important as life, but sometimes humans mess with that balance.

I only see it as a problem of being able to consent. Since animals cannot consent, we should limit testings to humans only, since only humans possess the intellectual capacity to consent. Which means medical advancements can and should only be made because of human volunteers. In the end, morality changes over time and people define it based on the voice of the majority in a society or religious books. Veganism is a great example of how morality changes over time.

The narration voice and the visuals both are great.

How many humans have to be anally probed by aliens before it becomes unethical?

the animations are always on point! i love how the background was kept beige :)

Always be your highest and best self. Be of service to others. Help others. Dedicate your life to serving others, being kind, compassionate, respectful and loving to all around you. Treat others as you would want to be treated in return.

i was talking about this the other day actually. i really don’t see a difference between who the product should get tested on first because even if products are tested on animals there’s a chance it can still be harmful to humans. and even if it wasn’t i don’t see people are giving products that may be harmful if it’s just to test the effects

For me, sentience is important factor. For the purpose pf this discussion I define sentience as the ability to experience the world as a subject, to feel and think and to have experiences and sensations. It is what separates an object from a subject. It is generally believed that rocks have no sentience, and therefore they have no perspective - they don't want anything, they don't really feel anything, they just exists with no preference for what would anyone would do to them so there is no moral difference to smashing a rock, petting it or leaving it alone as long as sentient beings are not effected. While there are some people that believe plants have sentience I do not, we know they respond to stimuli and have various evolutionary mechanisms that insure their survival but it isn't enough for me to suggest they are sentient so we can at best say we don't really have enough data to support they have sentience. In terms of animals, it is generally believed that many animals have at least some level of sentience, they have social bonds, emotions, thought and so on. If non human animals are sentient enough (not sapient, this is a different can of worms) to be at the same moral status of humans I think it would be more moral to use humans in those experiments since humans can give consent to such treatments. In my perspective we prefer to just ignore the moral status of other animals because it's convenient, we don't need to deal with its implications so we rather make up excuses for why it's okey because it is harder to ignore the moral status of other humans, the closer a group is to you the easier it is to not really care about it.

The ones fitting the best for the experiments are the ones who are closest to us,but more similar animals get to us,the more unethical it seems to hurt them.Solidarity is based on alikeness

We value beings based on empathy, if they're closer to us evolutionarily speaking we will empathize with them more. We feel for the suffering of beings more if we can imagine ourselves in their place, and that's easier if they're similar to us. That's why we empathize with dogs and monkeys and not much with fish or crabs.

It shouldn’t just be justified that’s a low bar if it means as long as you have a justification your good, and conversely it’s an impossibly high bar if you mean it needs to be justified definitively because good is not objective. Instead of faith in justifications of our choice it’s better to practice an appreciation of valid arguments.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” -Genesis 1:26

It’s a stop gap measure. Once we are able to simulate every single biological process inside a computer, we won’t need live subjects. We can just run a simulation to test out a drug or vaccine etc. It’s already happening in the pharma space but with limited capacity. Tech needs time to get there.

if i had to choose between saving a humans lifeor a monkeys im choosing human everyday

It's like a movie and a game All human main characters always wins when they fight against their human or non human antagonist Cause the creators just want them to be on top of everything

Anthropocentrism makes sense on a social level. It is an indicator they view are more cooperative and willing to focus on your needs. Imagine if somebody would value the life of your daughter as the same as a dog and now imagine instead of saving your daughter, he saved 2 stray dogs in a burning building. He was not obligated to help your daughter but you will forever remember that he does not hold the best interests of his tribe.

To be wholeheartedly honest and bluntly sincere, ethical and morally correct dilemmas have no bearings whatsoever in a world where monetary value is the driving factor when it comes to those in power! Wether we feel that that’s the way things should be when it comes down to whose life is more valuable than an others, it’s the truth!! Its a debate that just creates a “paradox” amongst the current generation of people. You can’t say that the lives of any living things are equal, yet enjoy the simple pleasures of life, like the device that we are using to comment on this video. Wether you feel that you are being sincere about your feelings or not, you’re contradicting yourself w/o realizing it! For example, people that don’t eat meat or wear fur, or use products that were tested on animals don’t bcuz they don’t believe in sacrificing animal lives. So they feel they do it bcuz of their moral compass and the gratification it gives them as a human being! I’m an outdoorsman as well as my 2 daughters, we’re family that hunts, crabs and fishes, who takes gratification in being able to put food on our table myself but I believe that we have the right to choose what we feel is right or wrong. We don’t have the right to tell others my way is right and yours is wrong. (If you do that you aren’t a decent human being anyway and shouldn’t be in this conversation). My point is that people feel they’re doing something for a purpose, yet use and enjoy daily activities that contradict themselves. It’s a paradox bcuz while are excited to get the latest smartphone, laptop, entertainment system, tablet, smartwatch, etc, living things are being destroyed EVERYDAY in order to provide the materials for us to enjoy them!

I think it depends on the ability of the animal to have complex wills of its own. You can find a cat in the street and take it home. You can say that you took the cat against its will, but the cat is pretty much fine with it. The cat didn't really have complex plans for the future which you interrupted with, and after a short while it will get used to the new situation and enjoy it. Ethics basically deals with how to balance the different wills of many individual beings, each of them having a "free will" of its own. But "simpler creatures" don't really have complex wills, so they are less included in this ethical system. And of course this is a gradient. Apes have more complex wills than lizards, so we would be more thoughtful towards apes compared to lizards.

Ima just say, I hope u guys have a great day

This is a video brings up a lot of valid points, but I am not sure that the full scope of the situation is being presented. Many people don’t understand the protocols and procedures that are set in place to protect the rights of animals in all different organizations. In the military for example most dogs and other animals outrank their handlers, what this means is in the case of injury on the battlefield animals are often prioritized over their handlers due to their rank making them the priority. Now this may seem like a trivial matter, but it does demonstrate the seriousness with which even the Army takes in regard to the treatment of animals. You can see in this example that even though these animals may not full autonomy in regard to their position in life, they do have justice in the way they are treated and respected even among human soldiers. Now for my civilian experience I have worked in labs with rats, chickens, and even simple research trials with humans. In order for any research to be conducted one first has to fill out the required documents stating what the research is, how it will be conducted, what resources are needed, what risks are involved, what measures are being taken to mitigate risk, etc.… This application is a lengthy process even for some of the simple research trials I have conducted. After finishing the application, it is then reviewed by your institutes research board, and they often have a list of needed changes that are longer than the original application itself and upon completing the new requirements more may be added or if you are lucky, you might finally begin to conduct your research. All these procedures are done to verify the ethical aspect of your research to verify what you are attempting to accomplish has a degree of non-maleficence and an overall beneficence. Even after all this work there are many experiments that get denied because the risk outweighs the rewards and even greedy organizations understand that lawsuits and dead animals are bad for their overall image. The last thing I want to mention is the process for a medication to be approved for clinical animal trials. Many don’t understand that years of planning and developing go into medications before they are permitted to go to animal trials. Most of these compounds are tested in a cellular level before they can be applied to an organism level. No cooperation goes into animal testing with the aim to kill animals, but they do go in with the ethical mindset of beneficence and helping to cure disease for humanity. The only way we could possibly replace the vital purpose these animals serve is if we replaced them with humans, but would that be more ethical or would the debate for innovation be even more heated than it is now.

awesome video, makes me think a lot

For me personally, this discussion breaks down to an eat-or-be-eaten problem. Back in hunter/gatherer societies we’d kill to sustain or livelihood and health while in research/animal experimentation we also kill to improve our living standards

i mean... some people (the Isrealis) don't see other people equally valuable.

Natural to want our species to expand, survival of the fittest. We just realise that and could act differently.

I know this might sound contradictive but we need to save other creatures' lives because they have saved our lives

What I've been thinking about for weeks now without certain conclusion. And suddenly this video pops up. My first conclusion is that we have to define life first, which I found really to do. ( However, it can be skipped) Then we define what "life" has moral status, or "souls", or self-cousious, it gets complicated really fast.

Most so called "animals" are better than some humans ❤

As long as i am living, i am all that is important.

Never Disappoints ✨✨

in another universe, similar video : "is 10.000 humans life more valuable than five primate?" nice vid btw. well done

monkey stole my mango once, lets just say he helped cure covid

No other species faces this problem of ethics and morlas.

Happy to see TED make videos like this!

We consider human life to be more valuable because we are humans. Even though other animals may provide value to us, stripping away all emotion connections down to biology, we want other humans to stay alive so that we can continue to reproduce.

Imagine an alien harvesting humans and their resources for the survival of its own kind. That's how it feels like to be an animal.

our brain often times tries to simplify things and that causes lots of problems, maybe we simply aren't asking the right questions

I love the throwback to the funny monke experiment 3:46

If you value your life lower than animal life... I agree with you. Your life is really worth that much.

Si existiera un solo animal que hiciera la mitad de las atrocidades que el humano hace, el humano no dudaría en extinguirlo.

"Whatever you decide, your choice should be well justified."

This is about self-preservation at the end of the day

This dilemma continue to plague me to the point of depression and it's not a joke

This thought process helped me to choose a vegan diet, as I live in a developed country with a good income and access to a variety of foods. I'm able to meet my nutritional needs without animal meat or products. Therefore, in my case, the consumption of meat for a meal would simply be greedy and be completely based on my desire for recreational taste, which I feel is an invalid reason to take another being's life.

It is horrific to see how nonchalantly we can debate about lives of beings who are separate entities. Who will never think of influencing our lives. But we are comfortable speculating about them, about us, about influencing their lives for our benefit as if we are entitled to do so. I sometimes wonder how did we reach this state of entitlement. To find ourselves able enough to govern the lives of another species. To almost play God. It is horrifying for me to find myself doing this exercise. To think I am remotely eligible to affect the lives of someone else, let alone the lives of members of another species.

You can simplify the question to: Should I sacrifice this stranger to save my most beloved? Most creatures in the world are selfish, humans included. We choose the best way possible to gain or save something we cherish be it pride or another person. The main difference we have over other creatures is that we question our nature, and that is a good thing. Because, humans will eventually ask the question "is the sacrifice even necessary?". And the question becomes even brighter and bolder when you realize we're in an era where we can avoid sacrificing anything if we try hard enough.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." "How 'few' must you sacrifice, before it becomes too many?"

I think a life should ideally only be substituted for another when consent is approved, and only necessarily imposed (in a case where consent is near-impossible to attain) when one has some degree of fulfilment left to live out over the other. In this case, I'd say it's immoral, but it's a regrettable and required compromise (this is different from the aforementioned case of it being a necessary thing to impose). I also think it's one which must have limits (e.g. call it quits when x number of monkeys or x number of months have passed). An alternative could be to ask for human volunteers, which you would hardly find, but if people are willing to volunteer for the tests to save others, it would eradicate the element of "oppression" that comes with forcing another being to do so.

Me: Wait, it's all a trolley problem? Ethical dilemma: *points gun at me* Always have been.

If we kill animals for pleasure ( food , hunting ) and abuse them for entertainment ( circus , zoos ) then what hope is there for those used in medical research which can be argued to be more justifiable. It is only when we’re able to shed our ego and value all life that this will become an actual dilemma , right now we’re too full of ourselves to see it as an actual problem.

I feel like animal testing should really be a last result. You can pay people to do practically anything.

As a Christian, I believe that human lives are more important as we were created in God's own image and likeness. Obviously, not everyone will believe that though. I still do think that animal lives are important and I also think that we as humans should try to protect animal lives as much as we possibly can but at the end of the day when required, human lives should be placed above animal lives.

Does anyone else see the issue of animal testing as insignificant relative to the issue of factory farming? if we go by death toll it certianly is, so is this dilemma just a distraction?

I do think a human life is infinitely more valuable than any animal life but I think there’s a lot more to consider. I doubt there would ever be a case where sacrificing every animal for sake of humanity would ever be needed. Animal lives are still valuable though and should be treated as well as possible.

Love the contents ❤️

At 1:25 it should say "this practice reflects the widespread belief [among humans] that human lives are more valuable..." I don't think anyone has asked non-humans what they think, but I have my doubts they'd agree.

"Why?" is a question that is so hard to answer.

One way is to think about average happiness or utility. Imagine everyone could be assigned a number of how happy they are. You actually can't in practice even if everybody told you the truth, but in practice you can tell the difference between a happy an unhappy person if they tell the truth, so in theory there can be a number out there. Average happiness is the sum of those divided by everyone. Then just compare what that value you'd have if you saved someone or didn't save them. I hate to break it to you, but some people get their happiness at the expense of others. Then you pick the action which maximizes this value. Now of course, you don't actually know how to convert happiness into numbers and you don't have perfect information of the entire world, but you can try to make your best estimate with imperfect infromation.

Our well being will always be the core of our experiments. We can question this. I have. A lot. However, the reality of our evolutionary instinct to survive will almost always prioritize us before any other being. Even, if they're our closest genetic neighbor. Breaks all moral codes.

If I were in this situation and had to choose to inflict suffering and kill a sentient animal to save one human, I would kill it. I think that it is really easy to defend either side in terms of value of life, but I believe that it is our goal as a species to (when absolutely necessary) to save our own species above all else, because that's what life does. Life I think is all about preserving itself and spreading itself by whatever means necessary. We have the ability to be sympathetic towards others and other animals which is great. In a scenario it is possible to not have to hurt a sentient animal we shouldn't hurt the animal. At the end of the day, I think that saving everyone should be considered first, but our own species should come first.

Something which adds more complexity to the moral calculus is whether or not animals actually are good models of what happens in humans. There's a bunch evidence is showing that animal models of disease are not necessarily reflective of human disease. 90% of drugs developed in animal models either are not beneficial to humans or cause harm to humans. The FDA also requires that drugs show efficacy in animal models before being tested on humans, but there's many areas this can fail. The drug can be safe in animals but not humans, or it can be safe in humans but not the animal model. Depo-provera is one such example - in the rodent model it caused ovarian cancer, and never made it to human trials. Yet, it is effective in humans. The overreliance on animal models meant that there were 20 years where an effective contraceptive was not used. So, not only does using animals in research cause harm to the animals, the knowledge gained might not be relevant to humans OR the knowledge from the animal model precludes use of an effective therapeutic in humans. But, and this is a big but, you don't know if the animal is a good model for the human unless you do the experiment on the animal, and that's where the moral status points come into play.

_Moral values must be taught at the early age so that each life matters most_

I think that any animal capable of feeling pain and thinking deserves equal moral status.

Have anyone also considered the ethics of just destroying the virus? And of course this way no one will be harmed by the virus again and there’s no need for testing but also it is very important to safe and record or knowledge so there’s an ethics of keeping the samples or a completely erase them.