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Ask HN: Is it wrong for a man to steal medicine for his dying wife?

by mybbor on 11/13/10, 7:17 PM with 5 comments

This is a hypothetical question my mother asked me as part of a psychology course she is taking. I found it very thought provoking, and thought you would also!

In Europe, a woman is near death from a specific type of cancer. There is one drug that the doctors know will save her. It is a prescription discovered and developed by a local druggist in the same town. The drug is very expensive to make but the druggist is only charging ten times what the drug costs for him to make. In other words, it costs the druggist $200 to make this wonder drug and, in turn, he turns about and charges $2,000 for a single dose of the drug. The cancer-riddled woman's husband, Heinz, goes to everyone he knows to borrow the money, but he can only get together $1,000, half of what it cost. He goes to the druggist and shows him the $1,000, explaining that his wife is dying. Heinz then pleads with the druggist to sell the drug for the $1,000 or let him pay later. The druggist denies Heinz’s request with, "No! I discovered the drug. I should make money from it. I cannot simply give it away. If you cannot pay for it, others can." Heinz becomes desperate. He waits for nightfall and breaks into the druggist’s store with the idea to steal the drug for his wife. Should the husband have broken into the store and stolen the drug? (Kohlberg, 1963)

Here is my answer:

Thats a good one. I think it is all about perspective. From the perspective of the law, no, he should not have. It is against the law to steal. But, from my perspective. The man surely knew by then, that he was going to be breaking the law in stealing the medicine. So, knowing that, if he still chose to accept the potential consequences of his action and steal the medicine for his wife. I don't think that it is wrong at all. Doing the opposite would be against human nature.

Love you, Rob

  • by iworkforthem on 11/15/10, 5:29 AM

    If I am the husband, I would into the store, pay $220 for the drug and leave a IOU.

    "Here's $200 to cover your manufacturing of the drug, I won't want you to go out of business too. Here's another $20(10%) profit, that's what I can afford now, here's an IOU for the remaining $1780 that I own you. I will pay you once things are better on my end. Signed, a loving husband."

  • by gregpilling on 11/14/10, 2:32 PM

    I saw a documentary where they used this same question. The filmmakers were interviewing children, and universally the children said it was bad to steal. The interviewers asked the same children the same question each year as they grew older and went through puberty. As they went through puberty the children began to see the morality at work in the question, should you steal or let someone die? With all the children, they began to question their beliefs on the right choice in the scenario. They all thought the stealing was a necessary evil and was justifiable compared to letting the wife die. It was fascinating to watch the kids go from a rote "stealing is bad" evolve to understand the nuance.

    tl;dr kids see things in black/white, while teens start seeing things with shades of gray too.

  • by drKarl on 11/13/10, 7:34 PM

    In the book "Do you think what you think you think?" I found many interesting ethical questions which might show you that your moral and your ethic is contradictory.

    For instance... if you can save either a man or 5 people, but if you save the man the other 5 people die and if you save the 5 people the man dies, should you save the 5 people instead of the lone man? Most people would agree to save the 5 people, arguing that one should look the greater good, and it is the greater good to save many lives instead of one life.

    What if the man is family of yours? What if he's your father, or your son? Here many people would change their dicision and save their family instead.

    What if instead of 5 people it were an entire city, 10 million people? Should you let your family member die to save 10 million people or viceversa?

  • by brudgers on 11/15/10, 2:08 AM

    Compared to the Fat man problem, this one is easy. Stealing is acceptable. We have courts to sort it out.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem#The_fat_man

  • by rick_2047 on 11/15/10, 5:20 AM

    An interesting point here would be "Why should the druggist charge 2000$ for 200$?" Many people may resent the druggist for overcharging for the drug (comparing it with Microsoft may be common). But don't for get the latent charges in developing that drug. The druggist funded his own research I presume. So he went through a lot of trouble for developing that drug (a cure for cancer cannot be very easy). So that extra 1800$ must justify the years of work he has put in (I am assuming he is not arbitrarily bloating calculation of man hours). Combine with that, the supply v/s demand issues and a price like that may seem justified.

    Letting someone die by refusing to suffer some loss (the 1000$ of latent cost of production) is not human. But then again, all his customers will be mostly of that sort, if he is not a saint then he will have to be stubborn about the price.