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Originally written by Emlurk:

"This is not an ethical dilemma. Under almost any reasonable ethical system, to kill this person would be unacceptable. The fact remains, however, that they are a stranger to you, and someone you know will die if you don't kill them."

On the other hand, you can go on a government funded trip to another country to kill people there, who may or may not be a threat to you, and come home a hero. (And/or in a body bag.)

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Originally written by Thuryl:

If you think "would you do it?" is an equivalent question to "is it right to do it?", then either you consider yourself to be a perfectly ethical person all the time or your conception of ethics isn't much like mine. To put it another way, the question was not intended to be which course of action is ethical, but whether or not to act ethically at all when doing so would involve considerable harm to someone important to you.

Here's another one that perhaps illustrates the point more vividly:

You're offered an opportunity to double the value of everything you own: a second house, a second car (if you have one), twice as much money in your bank account, etc. However, if you accept the offer, someone, somewhere in the world, a complete stranger to you, will die. Do you take the deal?

(The sting in the tail of this one, of course, is that by giving away all your possessions, or selling them and giving the proceeds to charities, you could easily save much more than one life. How, if at all, is refusing to do this morally different to accepting the above offer?)

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