How to Save A Life
No this isn’t a post about The Fray’s 2005 hit song, maybe a bit surprising considering how many times I listened to it growing up. Today I want to talk about the ethic of giving after being inspired by the most recent episode of the Making Sense Podcast hosted by Sam Harris. Sam is most well known as a premier neuroscientist as well as a ‘New Age’ atheist (whatever that means). His podcast centers around how we can live a morally ambitious life instructed by empirical evidence. I must say before getting into the issue at hand that Sam is someone I look up to personally. As someone who’s ethic was centered around biblical teachings growing up, Sam’s content has been a welcome relief to my own struggle of living an examined life while no longer having faith in any sort of higher power. That being said, the following content is meant to bring together people of all faiths and also anyone with a lack thereof to achieve a holiday season miracle: saving a life.
What would it mean to you to save a life? No, not figuratively, I’m talking about literally saving a life. To save someone from drowning, to rescue someone from a burning building, or help a person get medical help in an emergency. It would be impossible to not tell anyone, to not celebrate with others the great moment that both you and the person saved had just experienced. This would be no ordinary day. Sam makes this point and I wholeheartedly agree with his assessment, it would be the greatest moment in one’s life, bar none. I think it is plainly clear to any human being that saving a life is near the peak of ethical action, especially at your own sacrifice.
I have no doubt that anyone reading this blog post that was presented with an opportunity to save a life would muster the courage to do so. We humans have extraordinary abilities when facing such situations, adrenaline can push us past our previous physical limits and help us do what needs to be done in the given situation. When imminent harm is right in front of our eyes, the urgency we feel to act is immense. This seems to be something baked into our DNA. Of course, it makes sense evolutionary, species that have an urge to help others in danger are more likely to survive the challenges that this world can present. This instinct can become occasionally salient to individuals even in extremely safe parts of the world such as the USA. But, what about when the opportunity to save a life doesn’t kick in that instinct? Are we just as likely to act selflessly when our emotions aren’t engaged? I will answer for myself, it’s a clear no.
A major part of ethical considerations is distinguishing the way things are from the way things ought to be. Let’s dive a little into the former. As humans, we tend to care about the issues and problems not by the degree of suffering they present, but the degree in which it tugs at our emotions. The more an issue can touch our hearts the more willing we become to act selflessly. In today’s news cycle, novel issues capture the world’s attention only to fall out of eyesight as soon as the next one becomes apparent. In my personal experience, this cycle looks like this: moral outrage about certain issues in the world, possibly donating to an organization only to months later have forgotten most of what I had learned about the issue. I’m sure you can relate to this as a user of social media in today’s chaotic environment.
Is this how we ought to aim our resources though? Is relying on our emotional triggers the most ethical way of giving? I would like to present the case that there is another way of thinking about it. Let’s set our aim at the goal of saving a life, what sorts of things should we consider? First off we know that our resources as people are limited. We have jobs that pay a certain amount and we must take care of ourselves otherwise we will not be worth much to these people we are trying to save anyway. So there is a scarcity of goods (money/time) that causes there to be a real ethical consideration in how we spend that money towards saving a life. Let’s take it to the extreme to illustrate, say you were presented with the choice between two life-saving measures: the first costs $1,000 and the other costs $1. I think most people would understand how much further their resources can go in the 2nd option, no matter how rich you are you would be able to save more lives if it costs $1 vs $10,000. In this example the choice is clear. I want to extract an ethical principle from this example that can be applied to situations more abstract than the illustration above.
Where we choose to spend our money matters when our resources are scarce, this holds as true in the supermarket as it does in the places we choose to donate our hard-earned dollars. The realization I had here is that the ethical way of giving is not necessarily about the cause that tugs on the heart strings the most, but should aim at doing the most good. It seems with my limited resources that I should disregard how I might feel about different issues and try to empirically examine where my money can make the most impact (eg. reduce the most suffering). This is personally an insight that I find very compelling, so I’m going to go out on a limb and hope I have done a good enough job informing people about a new way to think about giving. Let’s try to save a life.
Malaria is an infectious disease carried by mosquitoes. Those of us living in the United States are lucky in the fact that we were able to eradicate the issue in the 1950s (Beaubien). For those in Sub-Saharan Africa, that same luck is not there. Estimates of death caused by Malaria range from 400,000 to 620,000 annually with about 83% of the deaths occurring in sub-saharan Africa (GiveWell). It can be easy to forget that none of us had a say in where we were born. I consider myself extremely lucky to not have had to worry about a mosquito biting me, causing me to be sick for months, and then to possibly die because of it.
GiveWell.org is an organization that evaluates charities and attempts to investigate where our dollars can go the furthest. According to their research, one of the most cost-effective ways of saving a life is through distributing preventative antimalarial drugs that can be administered during the peak season of Malaria. The cost of dosing a single person is about $7. Thankfully not all people that contract Malaria die, so that is not the cost of saving a life. When considering the death rate as well as other administrative factors, Givewell.org estimates the Malaria Consortium saves a life for every $3,373 donated towards its cause. So that is exactly what I am going to try and raise by writing this blog post. I hope you will join me on my quest to save a life this holiday season.
I have created a public fundraiser on Facebook. I invite any and all readers to give any amount they are comfortable with:
https://www.facebook.com/donate/2569588530005015/
Sources:
Beaubien, Jason. “Malaria Wiped Out In U.S. But Still Plagues U.S. Hospitals.” NPR, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/04/24/525405956/malaria-wiped-out-in-u-s-but-still-plagues-u-s-hospitals. Accessed 16 12 2020.
GiveWell. GiveWell, https://www.givewell.org. Accessed 16 12 2020.
