One of the challenges of being an ethical person is recognizing ethical dilemmas

Question

One of the challenges of being an ethical person is recognizing ethical dilemmas. Most dilemmas involve more than one issue. A famous dilemma is “The Heinz Dilemma” developed by Lawrence Kohlberg. In Europe a woman was near death from a particular kind of cancer. There was one drug that doctor thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging 10 times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000, half of the drug’s cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, “No, I discovered the drug and I am going to make money from it.” So Heinz, now desperate, began to think about breaking into the man’s store to steal the drug for his wife. Please record your own honest answers to the following questions: (1) What are the issues? (2) Should Heinz steal the drug? (3) What ethical could be used to justify Heinz’s action? This ethics survey is widely used to assess a person's stage of ethical reasoning. There are no right or wrong answers. I will release the rubrics on the following Monday and you can try to assess your own ethical reasoning stage.

Explanation / Answer

Answer

1) the issue

Heinz wife is sick and near death, her husband can't pay the full amount to the druggist, who discovered a drug in a radium form at wanted to make money with it but he was not ready to sell that on a half price. So the sick woman's husband Heinz began to think about stealing the drug to save her wife.

2) According to me' 'yes', Heinz should steal it because his wife could be saved from dying.

3) Heinz must opt stealing because he has no other alternative to save his wife, though stealing is not ethical and breaks the right toproperty but it cannot be as important as saving a life and protecting right of the woman and it can be better to steal and go to prison for a certain period then to lose someone who is dear. More than being ethical, moral values can be associated to this dilemma.

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