Human and Utilitarianism Essay

Let me begin by defining Utilitarianism: utilitarianism is the belief of doing what is right for the greater number of people. It is a theory used to determine the usefulness of the happiest outcome and how it will affect everyone else. Now, this sounds like a amazing theory, what would be better than making yourself and others happy? I found myself at first agreeing with this theory up until I really looked into it. At first I found myself thinking that not everything is about being happy; some may have to suffer for the happiness of others. For example, there were two boats one contains three criminals on death row being transported to prison and the other boat contains ten happy, loving families simply enjoying a vacation. Both ships have bombs that will go off in a matter of seconds, blowing up both ships and killing everyone. However, there is a solution. I for some odd reason have a device that sets off a bomb on ONE SHIP and deactivates the other. Now the morally right thing to do would be what? What is moral and right? Taking lives? Or saving them? I do not believe in ‘playing God’ or taking lives. I would simply ignore the Utilitarianism way of thinking and walk away. I would let nature take its course. If God has arranged this to happen, then it is meant to happen. Who am I to walk in and ‘play God’ ? I have to say I agree with Hospers when he says â€Å"A hundred men might gain great pleasure from beating up or killing just one Insignificant human being; but other men’s lives are not theirs to dispose of. † (Hospers) A Utilitarian would approach this situation by asking himself/herself, what will bring happiness? What will do good for greater numbers of people? Why should the prisoners get to live? There are only three prisoners, and have done nothing good but cause harm to society. What have these families done? The Utilitarian will start to analyze each detail of the situation. They first see that there are only three prisoners as opposed to ten large families. Hence, there are less people on the prisoners boat. Then he/she will see that the prisoners have already been sentenced to death, all being on death row. However, the main point will be that these are three bad men. Doing bad things, and causing pain and sorrow to others. Why should ten happy families be punished for their wrong doings? The Utilitarian would settle for simply deactivating the bomb on the prisoners boat. Believing that killing them will bring greater good and happiness to all. My argument to this is a human life is a human life; what if one of those men are actually innocent and were convicted for a crime he didn’t commit? What if the other criminal was to be released in the morning and go home to a family of eight children and a loving wife? Truth is we don’t know. Utilitarianism fails to acknowledge that a life is a life- we are not suppose to be playing God. We don’t decide who lives and who dies, even if it is for the greater good. We should just let nature run its course. Utilitarianism is a theory of always choosing pleasure over pain for the greater good of all. I believe that I have kept a closed mind towards Utilitarianism. The prisoners are already on death row, which means they are going to die for the evil they have set loose on our world. Why should I sacrifice the lives of innocent families, for a couple of men that have caused unhappiness to all? I want to reach happiness, as does everyone else in the world. I mean does the world function over what the greater good for all is? Is that why we have soldiers in Iraq sacrificing their lives for the greater good of America? Maybe I have just overlooked all the positive outcomes of Utilitarianism. I find myself agreeing with a lot of what it has to say. I want happiness, I want innocent lives to be saved, and I want to strive for the greater good of all. I find it interesting how easy it is to fall into the comfort of Utilitarianism. It goes along with my morals and values and yet I still feel a sort of guilt. If I were to deactivate the bomb on the ship with the families and let the prisoners die, I would still be taking a human life. In my religion (Catholicism), a life is a life. We must forgive sinners and those who have sinned against us. But if these prisoners are on death row†¦were they already destined to die? Would that already be in God’s plan? Was it God who sacrificed his only son for all of us sinners? I feel in a way that makes God himself a follower of utilitarianism. He set the example of offering his only son for our sins, to open the gates of heaven for everyone. Yet one of the Ten Commandments is â€Å"Thou shall not kill. † Is that not hypocritical? As I keep analyzing this situation I realize that God is God. He decides who lives and who dies, not us. I feel that it’s hard to stick to my morals when hearing the theory of Utilitarianism. Allowing someone to die at my hand for the greater good, for happiness of others. That just sounds selfish to me, kind of like the holocaust. Did all those innocent Jews endure experimentation and torture for the greater good of all? I mean, if it weren’t for these grotesque experiments we wouldn’t know the maximum altitude that crews in damaged planes can parachute safely to the ground or find the cure/treatment for hypothermia. The Jews were used as guinea pigs for the greater good of everyone else. Is that not Utilitarianism? So many people could have died of hypothermia if that experiment was never conducted. But how many innocent lives were lost to reach this conclusion? Is there a limit to how much sacrifice should be made for the greater good? There should be. This is where I cannot connect with Utilitarianism, the fact that some sort of evil has to be done to help others. I see hypocrisy in this theory; it wants happiness but wants to rule out evil. People are evil, mean and rude. No one can be happy all the time; no one can bring eternal happiness. This takes me back to my original example, who would I save? The prisoners on death row or the innocent families? The Utilitarian’s seem to have a more interesting argument. Its funny how by writing this paper, my views changed. I look at the situation differently now. I do not feel as biased and conservative as before. My ideas have changed to a more liberal understanding sense. Why release these evil me back into the world? We have enough chaos and evil. These are just three men who chose their paths and now have to pay for it. They were sentenced to death for a reason, I will not be held responsible for the innocence of happy families, children, parents, aunts and uncles. They are not in prison because they have not done anything wrong. They simply stepped onto a ship, whose fate I now hold in my hands. I have made my choice; I will deactivate the bomb on the families boat and let the prisoners face death.

12 Hour Shifts in Nursing

7 October 2011 Effects on Nurses Working Long Hours Patients in a hospital and/or healthcare facilities have to be cared for all day and all night, everyday of the week by nurses. The usual way to fulfill this need is to divide up the day into three 8-hour shifts. Different shifts have been put into place to help improve nurse satisfaction, decrease the nursing shortage and save the hospital money. The 24-hour day is made up of two 12-hour shifts; 12 hours in the day and 12 hours at night. There has been quite an ongoing debate over the years regarding this issue of nurses working over 8 hours in a single day. Many people, such as hospital nursing administrators, have reason to believe that working long hour shifts causes more errors in the workplace due to fatigue and irregular sleep schedules. Along with these reasons and other beliefs, 12-hour shifts in nursing should be revoked. The risks outweigh the benefits for extended hour shifts in hospitals and/or healthcare facilities, for both the patients and nurses. Nurses who work 12 or more hours in a single shift put at risk the health of themselves along with the health of the patients who they are treating. Working extended shifts causes fatigue, stress and lack of productivity. Errors are most common in nurses who are fatigued from working long and grueling hours. It is estimated 1. 3 million health care errors occur each year and of those errors 48,000 to 98,000 result in patient deaths. Many of these errors lead to malpractice suits and thousands of dollars lost (Keller, 497). This proves that working long hours in a health care environment will make nurses more prone to making error that may lead to patient death. Patient death is what the hospital and faculty members are trying to avoid, revoking long hour shifts seems like a proper way to start. As for the health of the nurse, nurses who work long hours are affecting their health in many ways. Some health problems that may occur in nurses are sleep problems, listlessness, and unable to think clearly. According to The American Heart Association, shift workers are inclined to drink more caffeinated beverages such as, coffee and energy drinks, smoke, and exercise less often. Along with these problems, working shifts and extended hours interfere with the body’s natural circadian rhythm, especially if working night shift. Human beings are designed to work during the daylight, not at night. â€Å"Symptoms of fatigue can include muscle weakness, lethargy, inability to think clearly or concentrate, listlessness, decreased cognitive function, anxiety, and exhaustion† (Keller, 499). This would not be acceptable for the high demands of nursing. Nurses need to be able to think clearly and stay sharp to make flash decisions incase the patients health rapidly decreases. If they are tired, they may lose this capability. Nurses also have to be able to work in high-pressure situations. If anxiety were a symptom of fatigue, this would jeopardize both the nurses and the patients. The nurse may lose her job for working while fatigued, and the patient may lose their life for not having proper care. Todays nurses would most likely oppose this argument. Most of todays nurses work long 12-hour shifts and favor them than five eight-hour shifts. They prefer working three 12-hour shifts, and then having four days off in a week. Nurses who work this shift can take a couple vacation days or sick days and be off for weeks at a time. They believe that working these long hour shifts do not affect their ability to care for patients, because they can drink coffee or soda and can take a nap on their lunch breaks. This argument may seem plausible, but reality is that these are only temporary fixes and may feel even more exhausted than before. In addition, during the four days they have off, they may feel weak and dazed so they will not be able to work a second part-time job if wanted or be with their loved-ones. After working that many hours in such a short period of time, they would need those four days off to compensate for the hard work they just endured. Health care administrators argue that having only two shifts a day (day and night) will help improve patient care because there would only be two nurses who would take care of a patient during a 24-hour shift. But still, it takes more hired nurses to fill a weeks schedule to accommodate each 12 hour shift is covered because a nurse can only work so many hours in a week. Annette Richardson claims that nurses who work extended hour shifts will be less productive during the last 2 to 3 hours of their shift. Signs of nurses being unproductive are; if he/she is taking a longer time to be with a patient than necessary, not completing patient charts and not being thorough on reports (Carson, 830). Nursing administration is there to help make patients and nurses happy and healthy. Health care administration wants the most work productivity as possible, and with having the last 3 hours of a nurses shift being unproductive will diminish that goal. Studies have shown that the most productive work schedule is working an eight-hour shift because it has the least number of errors due to workers fatigue and exhaustion. Nurses who also work long hour shifts may experience work ‘burnout’. A Burnout is a form of chronic stress related to ones job. Burnout occur most frequently in nurses who work long hours in high stress areas, such as critical care, oncology, or burn units. Symptoms of burnouts include fatigue, frequent colds, headaches, and insomnia. Mental symptoms may include decreased ability to solve problems and unwillingness to face problems and change. Nurses who suffer from burnout may quit their job or change jobs outside of the nursing profession. This causes shortages, which is currently a big issue in todays world. Not enough people are interested in the nursing career because of the high burnout rate. Linda Wilson was burning out because she worked the 3pm to 11pm shift in the critical care unit. The hospital was understaffed and had a lot of overtime. She barely got five hours a sleep a night (Ellis, 599). This proves that working too many extended hours a week with not enough sleep will cause burnout that leads to lost jobs. Lost jobs makes the shortage of nurses even higher and affecting patient care by not having enough nurses necessary to provide proper care and support to their patient during their stay. Overall, long hour shifts in nursing may have its pluses such as, a four-day weekend to be home with their loved-ones, but it also has its negative effects. Extended shifts may causes nurses to make errors while working from a lack of sleep and fatigue. This may end up in patient death or malpractice, which is the opposite of what nurses, and administrators are there to do. 12-hour days will eventually cause harm to him/herself because our bodies are not meant to work long and grueling hours because fatigue disrupts their ability to think clearly and quickly and may cause stress. With all of these going against them, they might get burned out and decide to quit or change jobs. An abundance of burnouts will create a larger nursing shortage than there already is, making the whole situation worse. I believe working 8-hours a day with three total shifts to make up a 24 hour day is the best way for both the nurses and the patients sake. It will reduce the amount of errors made do to fatigue and it will increase productivity in the workplace because nurses would not be affected by exhaustion. Works Cited

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What Is Human Reproductive Cloning - Essay Example As the report declares the most prominent theoretical source of objections in the ‘deontological’ school of thought is the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, the German eighteenth-century thinker who stressed the ideas of ‘transcendental’ freedom and autonomy. To define his idea of the transcendental autonomy of human reason, Kant presented several formulations of what he called the ‘categorical imperative.’ This is the moral law that he thought people should obey without exceptions. The general idea and two specific formulations of this overarching rule, and see how they can (or cannot) be employed in objections to human reproductive cloning. This paper discusses that Kant’s first formulation, which is of more use, was â€Å"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law†. The definition of the goodness of genetic diversity does make some sense, but it does not support the Kantian objection to cloning. We can permit cloning in cases where people cannot have children by any other means without allowing it to become the only way of making babies – and without disturbing the human gene pool in any way. Besides, it could be argued that whatever accidental advantages the variety of genetic constitutions has had in the past could in the future be secured by considered genetic enhancements. The more Kantian way to proceed is to say that genetic diversity is good, because it is natural, or intrinsically linked with human reproduction.