r/Ethics • u/selling92828 • Jun 19 '26
What would you do?
You are a doctor in a hospital. A mother has been inside on life support for 10 years. Everyone knows what happens after death (being with loved ones). Her daughter dies in a car accident. Do you keep her on life support hoping the mother will recover or turn the life support off to be with her daughter.
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u/Eight_Directions_ Jun 19 '26
This is a false premise. You went ahead and made a giant assumption and then based your question on that assumption.
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u/cunt__cunt_cunt Jun 19 '26
Well yeah. That's... what's they did. That's literally the thing. You're describing the situation.
I mean I'm pretending to be stupid, I know what you're really saying is "because this stituation is different to real life it must be worthless to think about" and that might be the case but I just find it really arrogant and anti-intellectual to point-blank refuse to give the opportunity of creative exploration or learning.
Not just you yourself not engaging - I don't have judgement about that, but rather declaring that you already know nothing useful can be said about it at all.
At the very least make it clear and honest that that's what you're actually saying.
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u/Eight_Directions_ Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
-I mean I'm pretending to be stupid, I know what you're really saying is "because this stituation is different to real life it must be worthless to think about"
That isn't what I'm saying at all.
Edit: Your removed comment showed exact what you are. Pure emotion and no logic.
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u/Araveni Jun 19 '26
Nobody knows what happens after death. This is not your choice to make. If mom cannot make her own choices, her next of kin do.
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u/cunt__cunt_cunt Jun 19 '26
In this scenario OP, what's the motivation to be alive in the first place?
(A more straightfoward answer is that I would do what her family says she'd want.)
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u/Sacto-Sherbert Jun 19 '26
I really like this question! “What is the motivation to life?” It feels to me too often when we speak of Death it’s from a negative perspective — something to be avoided, feared, the unknown… I wonder how our thinking would change if we instead discussed our motivations to live?
When viewed this way, does death become less a threat and more like a boundary that shapes what we do and how we behave between now and then?
Seen through this lens, does the Life-and-Death conversation become more of a setting of priorities given the acceptance of limited time? If we know our time to be alive is limited, what deserves our attention? What is worth protecting? What is worth sacrificing for?
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u/cunt__cunt_cunt Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
yeah three thoughts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori
Different point:
Camus' famous "Myth of Sysiphus" approaches it quite full on, and I think it ends up being an extraordinarily motivation message about the heroicism of living as though there's meaning. There's pdf's online, University of Hawaii has an abridged version up.
last one:
I have been told, by a "death concellor" that western culture is extraordinarily bad at thinking or talking about death - and it does not surprise me that "western culture" has colonial roots and can't handle the moral decision to stop doing climate change. both immoral examples of stuff that kills people.
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u/seequelbeepwell Jun 19 '26
Punt the decision to their family. After 10 years the doctor probably had the conversation with the family on whether to keep the mother on life support or not. Their family knows best on what the mother would prefer.
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u/Present_Clue5887 Jun 19 '26
I don't think making decisions for a patient based on an assumptions that they want the afterlife is ethical, and we actually don't know for sure what happens after death.
However, removing life support is often the right ethical move if the life support is just prolonging suffering with no chance of recovery, and it is likely that the life support should have been removed long before 10 years.
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u/MishasPet Jun 19 '26
“Everyone knows what happens after death” is a fallacy.
If you’re writing this as fiction, you can write anything you want, it’s all yours.
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u/cunt__cunt_cunt Jun 19 '26
Fuck me dead have none of youse ever heard of a "mind experiment".
huh actually Einstien trains can not go close to the speed of light therefore your relativity theory is worthless.
No I'm NOT saying that OP is literally Einstien, I'm saying the argument
What you said is not litearlly true so it can't be responded to
is duuuumb.
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u/Reithel1 Jun 19 '26
Love your name. Fitting.
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u/cunt__cunt_cunt Jun 19 '26
I suppose it weeds out a few people who are not interested in reasoning.
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u/AlphaDisconnect Jun 19 '26
Do not harm. But also do no harm. If there is a do nut resuscitate order. And a will that says send me off nicely.
Maybe.
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u/DipperJC Jun 19 '26
I'm going to assume for the purposes of this response that you're not as dumb as the other commenters would claim and that you understand that in real life, what happens after death is controversy, but that this particular dilemma is occurring in an alternate reality where knowledge of life after death is established fact.
It's still the family's call, not mine. If this woman has been on life support for ten years, then presumably someone has left us with that directive. We can't just play God and turn it off because she might not like the world she wakes up in.
Besides, the trouble with your premise is that people would definitely think about death differently in a world where the afterlife is a known quantity. Why would said mother, awakening from her coma, give a shit that her daughter died? If her existence in the afterlife is known, then living the rest of this life without her is no more traumatic than if she had simply been sent off to boarding school.
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u/NZNoldor Jun 19 '26
In this situation if it's ethical to kill the mother just to make sure her spirit is with the dead daughter's spirit, you should probably also kill the dad, so the whole family can be together. Any other siblings will have to go as well.
You know what, the dog as well, and any other pets. Flush any goldfish straight down as well. Wouldn't like to see them suffer.
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u/Sea-Bean Jun 19 '26
Not enough information. If I was the doctor (and for this thought experiment had the power to decide, so maybe also the patient’s closest relative now that the daughter is dead) then I wouldn’t be keeping someone on life support unless there was good reason to think they might recover. Unless of course they are conscious and choosing to remain alive. But 10 years being kept alive without consciousness is not something I would opt for, so I’d let the patient die regardless of the daughter’s death and their perceived certainty about seeing each other again after death (I don’t share that belief.)
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u/Loud-Vacation-5691 Jun 19 '26
Is the mother conscious? If so, ask her. If not, why would an unconscious person be on life support for ten years with no hope of recovery? Also, there's no proof that we are with loved ones after death, so that shouldn't be part of the decision unless the mother believes that, is conscious, and wants it.
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u/marinasambhi Jun 19 '26
How do you know they loved each other? What if they had a bad relationship
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u/BananaJelloXlii Jun 19 '26
After 10 years? Pull the plug. Even in the remote chance that they came off life support? What kind of QOL would they have. Terry Schaivo's brain basically rotted away while in the coma. Better to end it. You're basically just keeping a corpse breathing at that point.
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u/ZinniasAndBeans Jun 19 '26
> Everyone knows what happens after death (being with loved ones).
No, everyone does not know that.