Batteries not included

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It’s like The Matrix.

Toni Chestnut gets knocked down by a car and eventually comes to in hospital where, she’s told, she’ll be for six weeks. But she soon realises that she’s actually all right. When she starts trying to disconnect herself from the machines, the doctors stop her because her kidneys are actually being used to help another patient. They weren’t able to ask her for her permission because she was unconscious when the decision needed to be made. Toni wants her body back, but the doctors explain that the man she’s helping is a biotechnologist who has developed strains of rice that help millions. And he has a girlfriend and three small children. Toni is unmoved and wants the machine to be disconnected from her.

Should she be disconnected from the machine even if the other patient dies?

On the one hand, the doctors needed someone to keep the other patient alive and Toni happened to be unable to give her consent; on the other, once she’s conscious shouldn’t the doctors acquiesce to her wishes? What right do they have (did they have) to use Toni like some battery whether she was conscious or not? Apart from appealing to her sense of altruism, what right do the doctors have to expect that she’ll continue to support the other patient now that she’s able to make a decision? If the other patient was related to or special to Toni, she might agree to continue, but I think she’s well within her rights to want to be disconnected.

Of course, the scenario is designed so that the audience is potentially inclined to regard Toni as selfish if she refuses.

Anyway, Part II tomorrow and the truth behind the analogy.

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