Showing posts with label collectivist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collectivist. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Utilitarianism's "War Medicine" and its "Collectivist Fallacy"

Just a beginning note on a big big subject:

WWII's proponents of 'War Medicine', citing their utilitarian philosophy of 'the greatest good for the greatest number' forced some humans to undergo horrific and even fatal medical experiments and also refused to give some other humans the medicine needed to keep them alive.

Their moral claim for doing all this horrific stuff was that these relatively few people would only endure short term (fatal) pain while the vast body of humanity would benefit from this painfully necessary research , now and into the future.

Unstated in all this was their rhetorical claim that their overall medical vision was a collectivist one, where some would willingly give their lives for the medical good, like fit young soldiers, so that their grandfathers, mothers and little baby brothers would go on living.

But in fact the people behind War Medicine oppose peacetime's collectivist Social Medicine with all their individualist, libertarian, heart and breath.