In responding to readers’ questions, I often discuss why a proposed act is wrong. But it is also incumbent on me to suggest more ethical alternatives. Below, I revisit a few recent answers in which I failed to propose a better course of action when one was available — as many of you pointed out, and quite rightly.
A young woman wanted to send medicine to a friend in Mali who had malaria. If this woman’s physician father would declare, falsely, that the medicine was for her own use, she could obtain a full course of medicine for $10 through her insurance company rather than spend many times that, the cost to the uninsured, enabling her to send more of it to her friend: clever, altruistic and crooked. I urged her to acquire the medicine honestly. A former physician at the U.S. Embassy in Mali cautioned that medicine sent from the U.S. could arrive too late to help. He (and several other readers) suggested wiring the money so the sufferer could purchase the drugs locally. “A full, curative course of safe and effective malaria treatment is available from the pharmacies in Mali for approximately $10 to $20!” he wrote in an e-mail message — a solution faster, cheaper and better than mine. (And not even the cheapest: Other sources claimed lower costs.) This, of course, assumes that the dollar is still strong enough against the West African franc to buy much of anything, but I can dream.
J.T. wondered if his neighbor had the right to cut down trees on his own property if doing so deprived J.T. of privacy, shade, oxygen and beauty. Legally, yes, I ruled; ethically, no. Many readers disagreed, arguing that property rights prevail. Some declared that if J.T. wanted these leafy benefits, he should plant his own trees on his own property. I considered that but dismissed it as impractical — saplings take years to reach privacy-producing height — and thus was undone not by my moral reasoning but my arboreal ignorance. Botanically savvy readers suggested varieties of trees, shrubs and ornamental grasses that grow quickly. (A gleefully vindictive fellow proposed planting bamboo that would swiftly overrun the grounds of the tree-slaughtering neighbor.) One person suggested that a landscape architect could design small mounds or terraces to give young trees an instant boost in height. Others pointed out this happy consequence of J.T.’s planting his own trees: They would stand as a verdant rebuke to his neighbor. (As Joyce Kilmer did not write: I think that I shall never see/A poem as vengeful as a tree.)
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