Category: ethics
Associated thinker(s): John Harris
Original publication or approximate period: The Survival Lottery (1975)
Difficulty: Intermediate
Themes: fairness, consent, risk
Related experiments: transplant, trolley
Kind: thought experiment
Research checked: 2026-10-30
Imagine perfected organ transplantation and patients who will die without it. A society could operate a lottery that selects a healthy person to be killed whenever that person’s organs could save several others. Everyone participates in the selection scheme. Harris asks whether a policy that increases people’s overall prospects of survival can be defended even though it authorizes killing innocent selected individuals.
Can an impartial procedure make compulsory lethal sacrifice morally acceptable?
The lottery shifts attention from an isolated act to a policy adopted before anyone knows who will benefit or lose. It separates procedural equality, expected survival, and respect for individuals. A fair selection rule does not automatically establish that the thing selected is permissible.
Assess the scheme at two stages: before selection, when a person evaluates a risk, and after selection, when someone is ordered to die. A favorable expected outcome at the first stage does not automatically settle what may be imposed at the second. Insurance, compulsory service, and medical consent each involve different authority and burden conditions. Avoid moving between them without explanation. The lottery is especially revealing when readers accept impartial procedures in many settings but believe there are some burdens that no impartial draw can authorize without the selected person’s consent.
A defender emphasizes impartiality and the possibility that each person has a better chance of living under the scheme. Critics argue that rights against intentional killing constrain what a lottery may authorize. Others question the idealized survival calculations or distinguish consenting to risk from being compelled to participate.
The lottery is not a proposal for ordinary donation registries, which depend on different conditions. Perfect surgical success does not establish fair burdens. Harris’s case is related to transplant dilemmas but adds a social decision procedure, so its moral work is not exhausted by repeating the isolated surgeon case.
Compare a one-off selection with a permanent institution. Introducing opt-outs, unequal medical risks, or alternative treatment changes whether the promised symmetry actually holds; these are substantive changes to the case.
Historical association: The Survival Lottery (1975). The sources above support the scenario and its intellectual context. Where an original work was not retrieved in full, its account is mediated by the named academic reference; no claim of full primary-source verification is made. The explanation and reflection questions here are original editorial prose.
Access scope: Harvard’s teaching page directly supports the lottery setup and attribution to Harris. The original 1975 article was not retrieved in full; the response analysis and questions are editorial exposition rather than a claim to reconstruct every stage of Harris’s argument.