Utilitarianism and Healthy Homeless People

Extreme Measures is about ethics. How far is someone willing to go, and how much we are willing to sacrifice, in order to cure the world's setbacks. Utilitarianism is defined as the moral philosophy that says we should act in such ways as to make the greatest number of people as happy as possible. In the movie, Dr. Myrick acts as the utilitarian. He takes healthy homeless people with “no purpose” to live into his lab and performs experiments on them for research to help people who are not able to walk, to try and walk again. He thinks these homeless people will not be missed because they basically have no purpose in life. Although, Dr. Myrick's intentions are good, he isn't going about it the right way. He's taking people against their free will. For consequentialist it doesn't matter what kind of thing you do. What matters is that we maximize good results. This is what he's trying to do; he's testing out procedures on these homeless people. He feels that if he practices on people who won't be missed, maybe he can get away with it, and help the many people who cannot walk. Not only does Dr. Myrick try and convey this message to sway another person into being utilitarian, but uses his utilitarian mindset and gives hope to the paralyzed. With this moral thought process Dr. Myrick is not taking into account the choices of the homeless people. He also isn’t taking the worth of each of these human beings into account and justifies through excuses. These excuses involve him making a decision on behalf of the homeless on the worth of their life, and its purpose, and the happiness these people have. Whereas the British doctor uses more of a Kantian ethics system and points out what the doctor has not taken into account.