The Heinz dilemma is a frequently used example in many ethics and morality classes. One well-known version of the dilemma, used in Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, is stated as follows: A woman was on her deathbed. There was one drug that the doctors said would save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s laboratory…

  • Sergio@slrpnk.net
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    3 days ago

    Hmm… “life over money” seems like a reasonable justification for their decision and is an example of a “post-conventional” justification in Kohlberg’s theory, but I think it’s fair to try to point out the limitations of that justification as a general principle. I think that’s what @Dagwood222@lemm.ee was going for, but they were a bit too pithy, so their retort comes across as a straw man fallacy (more like whataboutism maybe - definitely some type of tu quoque).