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Comment by Symmetry | Hacker News Reader

In the US the federal government uses numbers around $10 million for the statistical value of a human life when doing cost benefit analysis for various programs or interventions. Any sort of lifesaving medical care can easily come in at more than $50,000. The operators shouldn't be hesitating to shut down that machine to save someone's life, and I would be willing to be that they are trained to do so.

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Now you are at the Trolley problem: shut down the machine to (maybe) save one person, but preventing all MRIs for the next x weeks, causing y indirect deaths?

It'll need to be shut down anyway to pull the giant metal chain out. You might as well do it right away. Patients can and will be rescheduled to other MRI facilities.

I'm not sure how this is a Trolley problem?

It's a logistics and legislation problem. Hospitals need to be adequately prepared for emergencies and handle backups.

I think a death machine that can't be stopped is an issue.

The Trolley problem is only a problem because there is perfect information in the hypothetical about the consequences of your actions. In real life, you have far less information to go on, which often leads to a more obvious right answer. Shutting down the machine to try to save the one person right in front of you that you know is in immediate danger is the right answer, versus the far less knowable hypothetical future where some number of people may or may not have delayed or relocated scans which may or may not have delayed treatment that may or may not have been immediately necessary as a life-saving matter. As a private MRI operator, you are not morally responsible for keeping your machine functional in order to help keep (figurative) passers-by alive. But you are morally responsible for the health and safety of the patients and visitors on your premises.

You're not exactly going to be running many scans with a human corpse stuck in the MRI machine...

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