Vaccine lawsuit poses moral puzzle

Psychologists devise little stories to help you examine your values. Here’s an old one. A hypothetical princess has been lashed to the railroad tracks. A runaway train barrels down the tracks towards her. You don’t have time to untie the ropes. But you can throw a switch that will divert the train onto a siding.

However … there’s a work crew on that siding. Or, in other variations, a station crowded with waiting passengers.

Are you willing to sacrifice those other lives, to save the life of one beautiful princess?

You’re not given all the information you might like to have. Like how far away the railway workers are. Would they have time to see the train coming and leap out of the way? Or if the siding goes uphill, which might slow or even stop the train before it reaches the station.

Nope. You’re just given the choice – save one life and risk others. Or sacrifice one life for the sake of a greater number.

Go ahead. Decide what you would do. I can wait.

Now for part two, also hypothetical. A pandemic has gripped the world. People are dying like fruit flies, especially in crowded long-term care facilities.

A pharmaceutical giant creates a vaccine to protect millions of people. Initial tests show it’s effective. But there’s a one in about 700,000 chance that the vaccine could trigger some intense, possibly even fatal, complications.

And I stress again, I cite these figures as purely hypothetical.

Do you release the vaccine anyway, to save as many lives as possible? Or do you withhold the vaccine, to protect one potential victim who may suffer life-threatening side effects?

It’s the princess-on-the-tracks dilemma, reversed.

I gather that about 80 per cent of people choose to save the beautiful princess. She is, after all, close at hand. The other lives are off in the distance somewhere. They might – just might – be able to save their own lives; the princess can’t.

Besides, she’s an individual; the others are anonymous members of a mass.

So you choose to save the one, and sacrifice the many.

I suspect you’d choose the opposite in the vaccine example. You’d save the many – perhaps including one of your own parents in their care home – rather than an unknown individual.

That is, in fact, what Ross Wightman alleges that AstraZeneca did. And why he’s suing the vaccine maker, and several others.

I have to say, again, that nothing has been proven in court. Also, that I am not taking sides. I don’t know Ross Wightman personally, although I consider his father a friend. And I have no knowledge of the inner workings of AstraZeneca.

After getting his COVID-19 vaccination in 2021, Ross Wightman experienced severe pain in his back. He sustained Bells Palsy, damaged reflexes and eyesight, weakness of his limbs, and paralysis.

Doctors diagnosed him as having Guillain-Barre syndrome. Guillain-Barre is relatively rare. It’s most commonly experienced as drooping of the muscles on one side of a person’s face. It rarely hits as severely as Wightman got it.

Only the fact that Wightman was exceptionally fit kept him alive. He spent two months in the hospital, attached to tubes and monitors. It took months of therapy before he could walk again. He still can’t play catch with his son.

His lawsuit claims that AstraZeneca knew their vaccine could – just could – precipitate Guillain-Barre. But they released it anyway.

It seems to me, from my safe distance, that Astro-Zeneca had a valid rationale for releasing their vaccine to the public. They chose to save multiple lives over a single life.

Health experts say that the risks of coronavirus infection far outweigh the risks of vaccination. There have been more than 41,000 deaths associated with COVID-19 in Canada, and maybe 10 cases like Wightman’s.

It also seems to me that Ross Wightman has a valid case against Astro-Zeneca. They took the chance that a single life might be expendable – “collateral damage” for a greater cause.

The dilemma has been around for thousands of years. The Bible records one such instance, where Caiaphas, the high priest in Jerusalem, argued, “It is better that one man should die for the people than have the whole nation destroyed.”

He may have been right. Or at least realistic. Forty years later, irritated beyond patience by those troublesome Jews, the Roman Empire did wipe out a nation.

Where do your sympathies lie? With Caiaphas and Astro-Zeneca? Or with the princess and Ross Wightman?

And how would you justify your choice?