All lives have equal value.

According to the law of nature, no. It was only as long ago as in the early decades of last century that even we in Western societies died in droves before the age of thirty from whooping cough, tetanus, diptheria, and even common blood poisoning from a scratch, not to mention flus, and pneumonia and tuberculosis etc. It didn’t matter how talented, beautiful or useful to society we were.

Only the genetically fittest survived. A walk around any cemetery will verify this.

Obviously the laws that govern this planet don’t rate us with the same value as we do ourselves.

Looking at it from the human perspective, we should treat our fellow humans as having value and be respectful of them. I do not however feel as though this applies to serial killers. I also do not believe in life at any price. Depending on the level of sickness, deformity or injury.

Sharkfin,

Sounds a bit like the *tolerance for just tolerances sake* mindset

“This is a question I've really grappled with. I'd love to be able to simply say yes and leave it at that, but…”

Same here TRTL. A damn hard one isn’t it! I’ve really battled for the last few days to work out how to address it.

David f, you present a couple of clear examples of human life not having equal value.

As an ecologist, I look for comparisons in the natural world. For just about any given animal species, we can see that different individuals have different values. The dominant male is much more important than non-breeding males. Young healthy adults are more important than old or sickly individuals. New-born young are much less important than older juveniles that have survived the high mortality phase. A small number of individuals are more important than a big number that stress the basics food sources and end up fighting amongst themselves or between family groups as a result.

You can look at any one of a wide variety of factors and they all indicate that there is an enormous difference between the values of individuals, at any one time, and that an individual’s value can change greatly over time.

Why should it be any different with humans?

The following has been sent to the wrong string.

Dear Ludwig,

You wrote: Is the value of a desperately poor child’s life, amongst hundred of millions of similarly poor children in Bangladesh worth the same as that of someone like Barack Obama or Bill Gates?

In writing you have mixed two questions - that of tribe and that of status.

Barack Obama and Bill Gates belong to our tribe. The Bangladeshis don't. There are high status individuals in Bangladesh. Perhaps you phrased the question the way you did to put a perception as all Bangladeshis as poor. Of course their average income is much less than ours, but all Bangladeshis are not poor. Some of our children are treated horribly. Occasionally the newspapers have an item of one of our children battered to death.

I have been postulating about your reasons but really don't know why you phrased it that way. It leads to a question of mine. Is tribe or status a more potent identification with most people? There have been a great many anti-Muslim and anti-Israel attitudes expressed on these strings. For the people on the OLO strings it seems to me that tribe is much more important than status.

Meredith- sounds like tolerance for just tolerance sake.

Are You referring to the fact that I think it is the height of cruelty and cowardice by Society to force SEVERELY disabled people and those in vegetative states to struggle so horrendously every day of their lives. I feel so sad for those people when I see them and I think how can society be so cruel and gutless. Selfishly worried Only about their own place in heaven if they allow them to die peacefully by human hand.

Sharkfin,

Nope I wasn't, I was referring to the idea that we must love and accept everything regardless of any fact or right or wrong.

It is a retardation of tolerance, it has become tolerance merely to be seen to be tolerant. I was agreeing with your last para, sorry it was unclear.

But while I am here, I will say I disagree with euthanasia deeply and dread someone deciding that on my behalf. It's not religious either it is an atheistic fear of death, to me the end, and a treasuring of every minute of my life...

I don't think we can decide that for others at all. Though if asked by someone in their right mind, yes it'd be cowardly to leave them alive suffering when they don't want it.

What I fear is the righteous decisions by doo-gooders that I may be one who would have wanted that.

My life has upmost value to ME :P