Ethical Scenarios Poll

Scenario: The Doctor’s Dilemma

You are a very skilled doctor with five dying patients, each of whom needs a different organ in order to live. Unfortunately, there are no organs available to perform any of the transplants. It just so happens that you have a sixth dying patient, suffering from a severe illness, who will die sooner than the other five if not treated. If this sixth patient dies, you will be able to use his organs to save the five other patients. However, a new treatment is available for the sixth patient; it is experimental but it is said to have a 75% chance of curing his illness.

Would you:

a: Let the patient die and then harvest his organs

b: Attempt to save the patient and let the others die

• Let the patient die and then harvest his organs

• Attempt to save the patient and let the others die

Scenario: The “Good Friend”

You are a grade 12 English student who gets good grades. A good friend of yours goes to another school, and is an honor student who has obtained straight A’s all through high school, has many friends, and has never been disciplined by the principal. However, near the end of her grade twelve year, she fell ill with COVID and fell way behind in her school work. She missed three weeks of class, which resulted in her having to rush a report that would be worth 40% of her ELA mark. She was so desperate about the report that she came to you and asked to pass off a report of yours on that subject as her own. If her English teacher caught her, it would be entered on her academic record that she plagiarized, and she will lose her scholarship to McGill University, a school she has dreamed of attending all through high school and needs in order to fulfill her academic and future dreams. There is also a good chance that, if the paper is found to be yours, you will lose your scholarship to the U of R as well. What would you do?

• Let your friend use your paper--it's not fair for her to lose everything; she deserves to succeed

• Don't help your friend; being caught plagiarizing would make things even worse

Scenario: One Hour Photo

You are a photo developer at a Walmart photo centre. There have been six instances over the past several weeks in which the same parents have taken film to you for developing. In those pictures you have processed, you have seen those parents with a little boy, obviously their young son. In three of those six cases, the child appeared to be injured in some way. One time, he had a bruise, one time he had a burn, one time he had multiple bruises and a cast. The first time you saw him with some degree of injury, you just thought to yourself, “Well, kids will be kids,” but, now that you have seen him this way three out of six times, you are starting to grow concerned that these parents could be abusing their child.

You know the policy at your outlet is to “Report questionable photos”, but you fear that if you do so, the police will take outrageous measures to try to “protect” this child. The parents could be totally innocent after all, but a child protective agency may take the child without any thought. This would leave the parents facing criminal charges, an expensive court case and possibly have to keep fighting to win their child back, even if found not guilty.

On the other hand, maybe the parents are harming their son and to not intervene would mean he will have to endure more of this cruel treatment, maybe indefinitely.

You consider asking his parents about what, or who, caused the injuries to their child, but for all you know, they might just lie to protect themselves.

What would you do?

• Report the photos as questionable

• Mind your own business

Scenario: It’s All About Connections

You are given the responsibility of hiring someone for a position at your company. Your good friend has applied and is qualified, but someone else seems even more qualified, especially on paper. You really want to give the job to your friend, but know that you are supposed to use proper business ethics, and be impartial and fair. However, you believe your friendship also has a moral importance that requires you to be loyal and supportive to your friend, who you truly believe in. What do you do?

• Give the job to your friend

• Give the job to the more qualified candidate

Scenario: Spam Filtering

You are the network administrator for a large company. You have a young family and need your job to support them. Part of your responsibility is to monitor the emails for the organization. Usually this just means occasionally unblocking emails for staff members that have been accidentally blocked by the spam filters.

One day you get a helpdesk request from a staff member asking for an email to get released. Normally it’s standard procedure, except this time the request has come from the wife of a very good friend of yours. You recognize the name on the helpdesk request so quickly attend to the problem. As part of the procedure, you need to manually open up the email to ensure that it isn’t spam; so you do, and you discover that it certainly isn’t spam. You find that it’s actually an email to your friend’s wife from her lover. You scan the rest of the contents of the email and there is no doubt that she has been having an affair for some time now.

You release the email, but you can’t decide what to do. Your initial reaction is to call your friend up and tell him about the email, however you quickly realize that company policy is very strict about revealing the contents of confidential emails of staff members regardless of the contents and unless someone’s life is in immediate danger, under no circumstances are you permitted to reveal the information.

In any case, you know that revealing this information presents great risk, because even if you don’t do it directly, there is a good chance that the dots will be connected somewhere along the line and you will be found out and possibly fired. However, you feel that by not telling your friend that you are aiding his wife in getting away with adultery, and this troubles you greatly. What do you do?

• Tell your friend about his wife's affair

• Be professional and respect her privacy

Scenario: Emergency

You are an emergency worker that has just been called to the scene of an accident. When you arrive you see that the car belongs to your wife. Fearing the worst, you rush over to see she is trapped in her car with another man.

She sees you and although barely conscious, she manages to mouth the words “I’m sorry”…

You don’t understand, but her look answers your question. The man next to her is her lover with whom she’s been having an affair.

You reel back in shock, devastated by what her eyes have just told you. As you step back, the wreck in front of you comes into focus. You see your wife is seriously hurt and she needs attention straight away. Even if she gets attention there’s a very high chance she’ll die.

You look at the seat next to her and see her lover. He’s bleeding heavily from a wound to the neck and you need to stem the flow of blood immediately. It will only take about 5 minutes to stop, but it will mean your wife will definitely die.

If you tend to your wife however, the man will bleed to death despite the fact it could have been avoided.

Who would you choose to work on?

• Your wife

• Your wife's lover

Scenario: The Fountain of Youth

You meet a person who is immortal, because their family have drank from a fountain of youth, not knowing what it was. You are now in love with this person and have felt this way long enough that you know them to be your destiny. However, the only way you can stay together forever is if you drink from the fountain of youth and become immortal, too. If you do this, however, your family and everyone else you know will grow old and eventually die, and you will never be reunited in heaven with them, or your loved ones that you have known, who have already died. On the other hand, if you don’t drink from the fountain, you will grow old and eventually die, missing out on an eternity of true love and happiness, and the person with whom you are in love will never see you again, and be condemned to an eternity of loneliness and only memories of you. What would you do?

(From Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt)

• Drink from the fountain of youth

• Don't drink from the fountain of youth

Scenario: The Mad Bomber

A madman who has threatened to explode several bombs in crowded areas has been apprehended. Unfortunately, he has already planted the bombs and they are scheduled to go off in a short time. It is possible that hundreds of people may die. The authorities cannot make him divulge the location of the bombs by conventional methods. He refuses to say anything and requests a lawyer to protect his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. In exasperation, some high level official suggests torture. This would be illegal, of course, but the official thinks that it is nevertheless the right thing to do in this desperate situation. Do you agree?

• Yes, torture him

• No, don't torture him

Scenario: The Vacation

You and your family are going away for the weekend. Your sister is 7 and is best friends with your cousin, who is also 7. Your families are very close and your sister asks if your cousin can come with you on your holiday. Your parents agree.

You arrive at your holiday destination and the house you are staying at backs onto a beach. You are left in charge while your parents are out one day, and the girls ask if they can go for a swim. You tell them that you need to finish making lunch, so they can only play on the sand directly in front of the beach. They run down to the sand; after about 5 minutes, you hear screaming coming from the direction of the beach and it sounds like the girls.

You run down to see what the matter is, and you discover that they hadn’t listened to you and have gone for a swim. There is no one else on the beach and the girls are caught in a riptide.

You swim out quickly, but when you get there, you realize that there is no way you will be able to get both the girls back into shore on your own.

You need to decide which of the girls you will rescue first; you have enough strength and energy to rescue them both, but you can only do it one at a time. You look at the two girls; your cousin, a weak swimmer, is really struggling to hold her head above water and you know if you take your sister back first, there will be little or no chance that she will survive.

Your sister is struggling also, but is much stronger in the water and you estimate that if you take your cousin back to shore first, there’s probably a 50% chance that your sister will be able to stay afloat long enough for you return, but you simply don’t know how long she will hold on for.

What do you do?

• Save my cousin first

• Save my sister first