AstraZeneca & the moral imperative

Why changing tracks is so hard

by Marco Verch under Creative Commons 2.0

The baffled British reaction to the German decision to suspend use of the AstraZeneca vaccine this week reminded me of a lecture I once watched by the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel. 

In it, Sandel proposed the hypothetical of a train flying at full speed with no functioning brakes. Up ahead, three people were tied to the track and faced certain death. But there was a way out. A fork in the track allowed the driver to turn the train to the left. The bad news: one person was lying on that track too and would be killed instead.

What to do? There are two moral solutions, Sandel explained.

The solution proposed by British philosopher Jeremey Bentham is to take action that maximises the good, even if that causes pain to the few. According to Bentham’s utilitarian theory of ethics, the right decision is to steer the train onto a new course, although that inevitably entails killing one helpless victim.

That is a conclusio…