Introduction
It is morally permissible to kill one innocent person to save the lives of more innocent people.
Killing an innocent person is an immoral act in itself, and it means nothing whether it has some noble purpose or not. For this reason, it is impossible to compare the life of one innocent person to the lives of other innocent people. Life is a God-given gift, and it is equally valued whether it is the life of one person or more than one. Thus, it is evident that the argument concerning the appropriateness of killing one innocent person in order to save the lives of other people is irrelevant.
Main body
Let us consider a particular example of the situation that might happen. It may occur that some crazy man will enter our classroom, and will say to the teacher that if he chooses one of the students to be shot the rest of the students will stay alive. In this situation, how may the teacher take this heavy responsibility, and choose the person who will die? Whoever of students deserves such a lot in his or her life? The result of this situation is expectable as no matter who of the students is sent to death by the teacher this decision will be neither just nor moral. This simple illustration helps see that making decisions concerning the life of an innocent person is utterly immoral.
More than this, when this kind of question is raised it is very important to understand the details of the situation. Making conclusions of whether something is right or wrong is impossible without learning all the circumstances of the case. Whoever decides whether this or that person is innocent? How to evaluate this person’s way of thinking if there are no details provided about the situation which require a decision?
One more important point in this matter is whoever knows whether killing this innocent person will appear to be a successful decision for saving the lives of other people. What if this plan of action is wrong, and killing the person will not change anything at all? Then, this murder will appear to be even more pointless and immoral. Again, making any kind of decision concerning saving the lives of some people, and taking lives of the other people (even if it is one person) requires knowing all the tiniest details of the situation.
Besides, the majority of people would never agree on someone’s death even if this death is important for their life. No one wants to be a reason for the death of the other person. It is very difficult to live with the thought that the other person died offering you a chance to live. In addition, whoever knows maybe the person chosen to die could be of great value to the humanity in future. It may happen that this person is skilled in science, and is gifted from above to produce the cure for AIDS, cancer, or another mortal disease.
Conclusion
All in all, taking away the life of an innocent person is an immoral act in every instance. Therefore, it seems that the discussions of whether it is morally permissible to take the life of one innocent person to save the lives of other people are inappropriate.
References
Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Fifth Edition). Edited by John Perry, Michael Bratman, and John Martin Fischer.
Nagel, Thomas. What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy.