The reality is that some human lives are simply not worth more than other humans and also not more important than many animals.
A few years ago when I was teaching at UCLA I asked my students this question:
If you had to choose between a human life and the survival of an unknown species, what choice would you make? And to make the question a little easier for them, I said the human life is a cute little baby and the species is a type of bacteria.
“So,” I said, “Does the baby live in exchange for the eradication of the species or do we save the species and allow the baby to die?”
They answered without hesitation and chose the life of the baby.
“What if I ask you to save 200 species of unknown bacteria in exchange for the baby?”
Again they chose the baby.
“Can anyone tell me why you made that choice?” I inquired.
“Because human lives are more important.” One student answered. Another said, “The life of a baby is more important than some germs, how could you even ask such a thing?” she said with a look of disgust.
“Congratulations everyone,” I said. “Your choice just caused the extinction of the human race.”
This is because there are anywhere from 700 to 1,000 different species of bacteria residing in the human gut and without them we could not digest our food or manufacture vitamins for our bodies.
This was part of a lesson I was trying to teach on the law of interdependence, that all species need each other and without some species we cannot survive.
Are phytoplankton and zooplankton less important than human lives? If it was a choice between diminishing human numbers and diminishing worldwide populations of phytoplankton what choice would we make?
Again I put the question forth, this time to some die-hard anti-abortionists. If the choice is between forcefully preventing abortions and allowing the births of millions of unwanted babies or watching the disappearance of phytoplankton, what choice would you make?
