Interesting 'RADIOLAB' podcast from earlier this month that inspired the thread. Summary: In this hour on Morality, we’ll explore where our sense of right and wrong come from. We peer inside the brains of people contemplating moral dilemmas, watch chimps at a primate research center share blackberries, observe a playgroup of 3 year-olds fighting over toys, and tour the country’s first penitentiary, Eastern State Prison.
Suppose you're a doctor and 5 patients come in as an emergency while you are giving a healthy individual his annual physical. You move quickly to stabilize their injuries and learn that 2 need kidneys, 1 has a lacerated liver, 1 has a ruptured spleen, and 1 has a torn aorta. In fact all 5 desperately need organ transplants or they will die. You go back to the examination room where you were conducting the physical and you find that your healthy patient has fallen fast asleep. You look at him resting peacefully with his healthy kidneys, liver, spleen, and heart intact and then look at the other 5 patients. H'mmm....