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Killing and Starving to Death

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

James Rachels
James Rachels
Affiliation:
University of Alabama in Birmingham
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Although we do not know exactly how many people die each year of malnutrition or related health problems, the number is very high, in the millions. By giving money to support famine relief efforts, each of us could save at least some of them. By not giving, we let them die.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 54 , Issue 208 , April 1979 , pp. 159 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1979

References

1 For an account of the difficulties of getting reliable information in this area, see Eberstadt, Nick, ‘Myths of the Food Crisis’, New York Review of Books (19 02 1976), 32–37.Google Scholar

2 Trammell, Richard L., ‘Saving Life and Taking Life’, Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975) 131–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is the Dest defence of this view of which I am aware.

3 This article is a companion to an earlier one, ‘Active and Passive Euthanasia’, New England Journal of Medicine 292 (9 01 1975), 78–80Google Scholar, in which I discuss the (mis)use of the killing/letting die distinction in medical contexts. But nothing in this article depends on the earlier one.

4 Foot, Philippa, ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect’, Oxford Review No. 5 (1967)Google Scholar; reprinted in Rachels, J. (ed.), Moral Problems, 2nd edn (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 66.Google Scholar

5 On this point, and more generally on the whole subject of our duty to contribute for famine relief, see Singer, Peter, ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (Spring 1972), 232.Google Scholar

6 Trammell, , 133.Google Scholar

7 This argument is suggested by Ramsey, Paul in The Patient as Person (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970), 151.Google Scholar

8 This difference between failing to save and letting die was pointed out by David Sanford in a very helpful paper, ‘On Killing and Letting Die’, read at the Western Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, in New Orleans, on 30 April 1976.

9 Trammell, , 133.Google Scholar

10 Trammell, , 134.Google Scholar

11 There is also some independent evidence that this prereflective belief is mistaken; see Singer, , ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’.Google Scholar

12 Grice made this remark several years ago at Oberlin. I do not remember the surrounding details of the discussion, but the remark seems to me an important one which applies to lots of ‘objections’ to various theories. The most famous objections to act-utilitarianism, for example, are little more than descriptions of the theory, with the question-begging addendum, ‘Because it says that, it can't be right’.

13 Dinello, Daniel, ‘On Killing and Letting Die’, Analysis 31 No. 3 (01 1971), 85–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Trammell, , 131.Google Scholar

15 Dinello, , 85.Google Scholar

16 There is another way to meet Dinello's counter-example. A surprisingly strong case can be made that it would not be any worse to kill Smith than to ‘let Jones die’. I have in mind adapting John Harris's argument in ‘The Survival Lottery’, Philosophy 50 (1975), 81–87.Google Scholar