21st of October

AB 4ELS
On Utilitarianism vis--vis the film Extreme Measures (1996)
Extreme Measures is a film that deals with the moral and medical dilemmas
of which lives to prioritize and the questionable ethics of doing bad things to result
in more good.

Specifically, the film leads us to dwell on the question of if it is

morally acceptable to kidnap, to experiment on, and to kill a few healthy people for
the sake of furthering medical research on a cure for paralysis which debilitates
millions?
Dr. Lawrence Myrick, a distinguished neurologist and medical researcher,
does exactly that in the film. He takes homeless people dwelling underground, who
Myrick insists that society would not miss, and uses them as his human
experimental research subjects without their consent. Through his methods, he has
made significant breakthroughs in restoring mobility in paralytics by inducing the
growth of nerves, at the cost of the many lives of those who became his subjects.
Now, the quandary here has very debatable answers. Dr. Myrick asked the
protagonist, Dr. Guy Luthan, at one point in the film, If you could cure cancer by
killing one person, wouldnt you have to do that? He also claims that people die
every day anyway, and his research gives purpose to, in his words, those with not
much point to their lives, those that spend their lives lost, cold, stoned or worse,
those with no future. In Myricks eyes, they become heroes who help further the
boundaries of the medical field.
From the perspective of act utilitarianism, which looks at an individual act and
determines if it is good if it produces the greatest happiness or good for the greatest
number, Myricks methods would be acceptable. An act utilitarian would ask, Does
this particular action maximize happiness or produce the greatest good? The
answer from that perspective would be, Myricks method will make life better for
millions of people who will be able to walk again, so yes. Act utilitarianism looks
into the context and circumstances of one act to judge if it will lead to good
consequences for a greater number of people.

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However, a rule utilitarian would abhor such methods. Rule utilitarianism

doesnt assess individual actions for their utility, but rather it says that an action is
good if it conforms to a rule which, if generally practiced, would produce the
greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. So in the context of this film,
a rule utilitarian would ask, If all medical practitioners generally relied on human
experimentation without the subjects consents, like Dr. Myrick did, to further their
research, would it maximize happiness? Others who believe in rule utilitarianism
would not seek to know the details surrounding the act, but would rather answer. If
all doctors generally followed Dr. Myricks method as a rule, then what would limit
them all from doing it again and again in an attempt to cure every disease in the
world? More people would die on the surgical table than be healed from whatever
disease affects them. What would be the use of the doctors Hippocratic Oaths, in
which they swore to avoid harming patients and causing suffering? What about the
best interests of those people who died due to experimentation? Myricks method
does not maximize happiness due to these.
Luthans rebuttal is similar in nature to the rule utilitarians position. Luthan
adds, Maybe they are heroes. But they didn't choose to be. You chose for them. You
didnt ask for volunteers. And you can't do that, because you're a doctor, and you
took an oath. And you cant play God. I don't care if you find a cure for every
disease on the planet! You tortured and murdered those men upstairs, and that
makes you a disgrace to your profession!
This kind of moral quandary already has historical basis in Unit 731 of the
Imperial Japanese Army which undertook lethal human experimentation like
vivisection, weapons testing, food and water deprivation, and injection of diseases,
for biological and chemical warfare on tens of thousands of Allied prisoners of war.
People involved in this were never punished, and were given immunity provided
that they gave up their data to Allied scientists. The data received lead to great, lifesaving, breakthroughs in medical and even space, research, similar to the movie
which implies that Luthan will use Myricks data along with better methods to
further his neurological research.
John Stuart Mill, however, espouses a eudaimonistic utilitarianism, which
claims that a persons higher pleasures (high culture, scientific knowledge,
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intellectuality, and creativity) take superiority against the lower pleasures (eating,
drinking, sexuality, and resting). He writes in his book, Utilitarianism According to
the Greatest Happiness Principle () the ultimate end () is an existence exempt as far as
possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and
quality; (). This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is
necessarily also the standard of morality; which may accordingly be defined, the rules and
precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an existence such as has been
described might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them
only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation. It seems to

say that an act is correct when it corresponds to rules whose preservation increases
the mass of happiness in the world, which is a rule-utilitarian approach. Whether
Myricks experimentation was kept a secret or not, the fact remains that his human
subjects led existences that were not exempt from pain and were deprived of
happiness when Myrick took them to his labs. While the good consequence of
Myricks research can be used for greater satisfaction of the higher pleasures, it
does not outweigh the negative choices he made while breaking the rules or laws of
his profession and his oath.
Utilitarianism is very tempting to follow due to its strengths and virtues. The
first is that it provides a very simple principle by which to guide actions: Do
whatever promotes the most utility. However, this can be contested by saying that
life is not always so black and white, and most of the time, one may not always
have the chance to weigh or measure two or more actions resulting utility. The
second is that utilitarianism seems commonsensical in such a way that it provides
more clarity than moral absolutism or universality. Its core is to promote human
flourishing and reduce suffering.

The third is that it addresses the problem of

posterity. The future generations dont even exist yet, so why should we save up our
already scarce natural resources for them when the current number of people
whose quality of life is so bad is already quite numerous? Utilitarians would answer
that since our aim is to maximize happiness, as long as the quality of life of future
people promises to be positive, we have an obligation to continue human existence,
to produce human beings, and to take whatever actions are necessary to ensure
that their quality of life is not only positive but high.

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There are several problems with Utilitarianism, however. First is that there
exists a problem of how to measure happiness and whose happiness to prioritize,
and that a very analytical mind is needed to quickly decide whichever action is the
one that produces the most utilitarian consequences. Also, since it claims that one
must always do whatever act promotes the most utility, everyone is bound to
consider the utility of all their actions, even their small ones. Take, for example, that
a woman has worked all day in the office, and then did all the chores, took care of
her children, and participated in the community charity event. She wants to get
coffee with her friends, catch up, and relax, but utilitarianism says always do what
can produce the most utility, and that particular action is to continue her job,
continue doing chores, and continue taking care of her children. This particular
approach makes morality a taxing and demanding thing. Another weakness is that
one utilitarian may have a different analysis of the situation and consequences
utility and a different judgment call to make. This makes it somewhat relativist. To
use the movies situation as an example, Myrick wanted to force homeless people to
be his healthy human subjects to eradicate paralysis, which will benefit millions. If
Luthan had been on a similar wavelength, but had insisted that he use human
subjects who gave informed consent (like those who were going to commit suicide
anyway) Luthan would be utilitarian in that he considered the utility of ridding the
world of paralysis and the utility of saving more people from being taken and
experimented on against their will.
Utilitarianism as an ethical school of thought has its own meritable and
questionable points. While it addresses several problematically debatable areas of
morality, it also has loopholes in which more unscrupulous people could take
advantage of. In the end, utilitarians, and particularly Mill, claim that what matters
in morality are the pleasing or painful consequences of our actions. Whether or not
a person possesses virtues play no role in making such assessments. This has the
result of making it seem like morality is a set of ambiguous rules, rather than
something internalized and natural.

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